


Then There Was Rain

by HowCleverOfYou



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, Canonical Child Abuse, Courtroom scenes, Homophobic Language, Lawyers, M/M, Romance, Tech Support!Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-24 06:42:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/936615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HowCleverOfYou/pseuds/HowCleverOfYou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been one week and four days since his father screwed up and took him to the same hospital one too many times. One week and four days since Nurse McCall pulled him aside and asked, “Is he hurting you?” and he said, “Yes,” for the first time.</p><p>Or, the one where Stiles is tech support and fixes more than just Isaac's computer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Then There Was Rain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xinio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xinio/gifts).



Isaac may be an adult with an actual nine-to-five, but it still feels like the death sentence of waking up for school as he drags himself out of bed every morning to get ready for work. He can wear what he wants, within certain limits, but it feels like a popularity contest. He never went to high school, but he’s seen enough on TV to have a good idea of how it goes. He wears cardigans and scarves and big knit sweaters because they make him feel safe (and they hide his scars).

He puts on his scowl as soon as he leaves his apartment, which probably gives him the overall look of a Chihuahua in a sweater vest, but most people steer clear, so he avoids having to talk to, well, anyone. And that’s nice, because he’s not sure _how_ to talk to anyone.

The commute isn’t killer – other than the fact that it’s eight-thirty in the morning on a bus in the middle of California – and he usually makes it into the office well before his manager Derek pokes his head over the cubicle wall and glares.

Isaac doesn’t know anyone outside of the few people that have adjoining cubicles, but he sees the same two men almost every morning in the elevator. He knows the one guy (who is totally his type, oh god, he is hot as all burning hell) has a girlfriend named Allison, and he only knows this because he’s arguing with her over the phone almost every time Isaac sees him. And then there’s the guy with the short crop hair and baseball cap who falls asleep against the wall on their way up. Isaac doesn’t know anything about him other than the hints his graphic tees give.

It’s five past nine when Isaac finally rushes into the building, nearly knocking over a woman and her child outside. He runs into the elevator and presses the buttons manically, trying to get it to _move move move_ , forgetting momentarily about the crippling fear that encompasses his entire being whenever he steps foot into one of the cars. It jerks and rises slowly. He’s so grateful his cubicle is on the second floor because he’s not quite as screwed as he could be.

He wants to run, but everyone is already at their stations, so he walks slowly and carefully through the maze of desks until he reaches his computer. His hair is wet from the downpour outside and he hasn’t had his coffee and he _knows_ he’s going to be an asshole to the first person who speaks to him today, so when he sneers at Erica it’s not a surprise.

She stands up and peers over the wall separating their spaces. She has a pair of black-rimmed glasses on, but she’s wearing heavy makeup underneath. She smacks her gum at him as she pushes a pencil into the blond bun on top of her head.

“What’s up your ass?” she asks.

“Rain,” he says, shaking himself out a little bit. He doesn’t take off his sweater even though it’s five pounds heavier than it was when he put it on this morning. “Lack of coffee. Work. _Life_.”

She shakes her head. “If you had come to my party last night, you would be a lot happier. Hungover, but at least you wouldn’t be so _boring_.”

“Oh my God,” he says, because there’s nothing he can do to stop her. She’s asked him to come to her party almost every day since he started. He doesn’t tell her why he doesn’t want to go, and even though he says no every single time, she keeps asking. “Please leave me to die.”

“Suit yourself.” She disappears back behind her desk. A moment later, he hears her take a call.

He sits with his forehead on the desk for a few minutes, letting his sopping hair seep into his paperwork. He’s going to have to redo it all anyway. He wishes hard for a big cup of black coffee, but when he opens his eyes and sits up, his desk is just as empty as ever.

He does, however, have ink smeared on his forehead, which is helpfully pointed out by Derek, who stops to stare menacingly before moving on. Isaac sighs, rubs half-heartedly at medical words he can’t pretend to know how to pronounce stamped on his forehead, and turns on his computer.

It freezes on the blue start up screen and he tries not to crawl under his desk and go back to sleep.

“This is the worst fucking day of my life,” he says to no one in particular. It’s not the worst fucking day of his life. That had been the day he’d come home to find a white sheet over his mom in the living room and his dad standing there crying, blood on his hands. Isaac was eight years old.

He opens the cabinet on his right and punches the number for tech support. As it’s ringing, he reaches down and presses the restart button.

“Tech Support, this is Stiles.”

“Hi,” he says, trying not to yell. He’s not going to be that person. He’s not going to be his father. His head is starting to ache. “My computer won’t turn on.” He pauses for a second, then cuts across Stiles before he can reply. “And _yes,_ I tried restarting it.”

“You’ve gotta give me more information, dude. Is it not turning on or is it not loading?”

“The screen is blue. That’s it.”

“What’s your computer code?”

Isaac looks half-heartedly through the mess on his desk before sighing. He leans back in his chair and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know, man.”

“Hey,” Stiles says placatingly. “No biggie. What’s your desk number?”

“245.”

“Okay…” There’s a distant thump and the sound of turning pages. “245. Your computer code is 97834.”

Isaac doesn’t write this down because maybe if he doesn’t accept that his computer hates him, it won’t. This is poor logic and he realizes it but he still hasn’t had any coffee. He toes off his shoes and drapes his socks over the top of the computer box below the desk to dry.

The computer restarts without him touching it and the monitor lights up with a black screen and a million scrolling characters.

“Okay, so it’s on,” he says. “What do I do?”

“Sit back and relax,” Stiles tells him. Isaac can hear his furious typing over the phone. “Your computer will be back to life in no time.”

Isaac makes a noise of acknowledgement and closes his eyes, trying to will away his headache.

“Presto,” Stiles says finally, and Isaac opens his eyes to see his default background staring back at him. “Why is your desktop still the factory-installed hill?”

“What do you want me to change it to?” he asks. He pushes his mouse down and opens up his empty pictures folder. “Pick which one you like best.”

“Hmm...” The courser starts moving on its own accord and scrolls almost thoughtfully across the white box. “I don’t know, man. They’re all such wonderful pictures. Is that you and Morgan Freeman?”

“That’s my mom,” Isaac says flatly. Stiles laughs.

“You disappoint me. You can’t imagine some of the shit I’ve seen on people’s desktops.”

“Yeah?”

“Naked ladies. Naked ladies on motorcycles. Naked _dudes_. Like literal actual nakedness, not hiding nothing, man. I mean, you’re in a work place, come on. Not the weirdest thing I’ve seen, though. Pictures this: Twilight Sparkle, right? On a battlefield, all decked out in war gear, fighting Chuck Norris in a bikini. Sharknado spinning merrily on the horizon. I almost pissed myself.”

“I don’t know what’s worse,” Isaac says, smiling. “You being able to recognize Twilight Sparkle or the picture itself.”

“I have little cousins!” Stiles argues and Isaac laughs. “Oh my God, if you’re going to be mean to me, I’m going to break your computer again.”

“No, please,” Isaac says, but his giggling probably isn’t helping. “You’re a god. You’re beautiful. You should get a raise.”

“Flattery won’t get you anywhere,” Stiles says. A moment later, he goes, “Okay, maybe it will. I’m blushing.”

“Thanks for fixing my shit. I owe you one.”

“I accept payment in the form of comic books and fruit roll ups.”

“Oh, crap,” Isaac says. He leans forward and brings up his work documents. “You’re not, like, twelve, are you?”

“Sorry to disappoint,” he says. When Isaac squawks, he laughs. “Nah, man. Twenty-one.”

“Thank God. I shudder to think Argent is turning into one of those companies that enslave small children and force them to fix computers. Which have pictures of naked people on them.”

“All in a day’s work, bro.” There’s muffled speaking on the other end of the line and Stiles says, “I need to get back to the grind.”

“Thanks again. I really appreciate it.”

“I hope I don’t have to talk to you again.”

“You and me both.”

He hangs up with Stiles and immerses himself in the oddly calming drone of typing up records. It doesn’t give him time to think about court dates or the black cast under the sleeve of his sweater, even though the angle he has to type at is awkward.

He doesn’t think about anything until Erica rounds the wall of his cubicle and hops up on his desk, her skirt showing far more leg than Isaac is interested in seeing. He finishes typing up the row he’s on and makes a little dot next to it in pencil to mark his spot.

“You want to get lunch?” she asks. “Me and Boyd are going to go pick up some sandwiches at the deli.”

“Sure.” He cracks the knuckles of his left hand and winces when Erica reaches out to touch the scabbing cut above his eye. He tries not to think about it.

“You need to stop wrestling,” she says. “We all hate to see you get hurt.”

“That’s how I got my scholarship,” he lies. “I need to keep in shape.”

He doesn’t have a scholarship, nor is he on his way to earning a degree. He did pull glass out of his face with shaking hands, blood staining his fingers, before he was manhandled out of the bathroom and shoved down the stairs.

He tries not to think about it.

Erica frowns at him for a moment then grins widely. “Turkey and swiss, right? And those black pepper chips.”

“You got it.”

“I’ll bring it up to you. Now, back to work, mister.” She winks at him and walks away, leaving him to think about shattering glass and the sound of his father shouting.

It’s been one week and four days since his father screwed up and took him to the same hospital one too many times. One week and four days since Nurse McCall pulled him aside and asked, “Is he hurting you?” and he said, “Yes,” for the first time.

His father is in custody and Isaac is scheduled to see a psychiatrist in two days so she can assess the mental and emotional damage. Nevermind the three broken ribs, the fractured arm, the bruises on his wrists and neck, and the scars that still stand out white on his skin – they want to dig deeper. They want to know just how much his father hurt him.

He just wants to put on his heaviest sweater, lock the three dead bolts on his front door, and go to sleep forever.

He’s twenty years old and up until a week ago, he lived with his father. Now he has an apartment this side of town, where the landlord is holding off on charging him until he has the money. She’s a friend of Nurse McCall’s and he is too embarrassed to say thank you. He’s stuck on _twenty years old and still too afraid to get away._

He can feel a panic attack coming on, so he puts his damp socks back on and walks carefully out to the fire escape. There are a group of people smoking off the balcony on the floor above, but he’s alone down here, so he sinks down by the door and puts his head between his knees.

It’s not raining anymore, but the air is heavy and muggy. His socks are getting wet from the water still clinging to everything and his chest aches, but he doesn’t know if it’s because of his asthma or because of his ribs.

He stays outside until he stops shaking, then pushes himself back up and goes back to his desk. Erica and Boyd are already there, chatting around the wall of their cubicles, and Isaac’s lunch is on his desk.

“Sweetheart, you need to sleep more,” Erica tells him when he appears. “I could use the bags under your eyes as a purse.”

“Thanks for the food,” he says instead. “How much do I owe you?”

She shakes her head. “You look like you need it today.”

He nods at her and sits down so they can’t stare at him anymore. After a moment, their talking resumes, and Isaac unwraps his sandwich. The bread isn’t dry but the turkey is, but he eats all of it without tasting anything. When he’s done, he balls up the paper and throws it in the trash, then buries himself in records again.

At four fifty, he shuts down his computer and gathers up his stuff. He spends as much time as possible organizing and putting things away and stalling having to go home. It’s stupid because he’s going to go home to an empty apartment instead of a house in the suburbs where smashed plates make him bleed. But he’s been afraid to go home for most of his life, so it’s going to take more than a week and four days before he’s okay again.

Finally, he gets up out of the chair and forces himself down the aisle and to the elevator. Erica and Boyd are already gone. Most of the office is empty, save for a few people working overtime. The elevator is empty but the sound Isaac makes when the car drops isn’t any less embarrassing.

The sky is still cloudy. He takes the bus, sits beside a woman who smells like cat litter, and gets off five stops later. He stands in front of his apartment building, keys clutched in his hand, the thumb of his right hand stroking up and down the thin bottle of Mace he carries in his pocket. He feels paranoid, but he hits his cast on the door on his way in and allows himself the right to be.

Isaac’s apartment is three floors up. His father doesn’t jump out from behind the potted plant in the lobby. He doesn’t stop the elevator to trap and strangle Isaac. He isn’t sitting on the couch waiting when Isaac opens the door. According to the law, he can’t come near Isaac or his house or the place he works, but that doesn’t mean he won’t.

He locks the three dead bolts on his door and lets himself breathe for the first time all day.

Xxx

It isn’t raining the next morning, but the sky is still heavily overcast. There’s a sharp breeze beneath the humidity and Isaac is both hot and cold at any given moment. He gets to work on time, thank god, and Erica smiles at him when she arrives.

He goes to turn on his computer, but all he’s given is a blue screen.

He sighs and picks up the phone.

“This is Stiles.”

“Hey, it’s Isaac. From yesterday. My computer is doing the blue screen thing again.”

“Oh, man. Okay. Computer code?”

“I, uh, was hoping this wouldn’t happen again.”

“No worries.” There’s the thump of Stiles pulling out his book again and flipping through the pages.

“245,” Isaac reminds him.

“245…”

The computer restarts, just like yesterday, and then the screen with scrolling numbers and letters comes up again.

“You have a good night?” Stiles asks.

“What?”

“Did you have a good night.”

“Oh.” Isaac toes off his shoes so he has something to do. “I guess so.”

“I finally got my buddy Scott to watch Star Wars. Can you believe he’d never seen it? Twenty-one years, man. Shameful.”

“Which ones did you watch?”

“We got halfway through A New Hope and he fell asleep.”

“Ouch.” The mad typing starts and Isaac watches a series of letters appear. It’s all in code and he has no idea what he’s looking at.

“Yeah, right? I made him buy me breakfast. Not that it was much, just a scone from that coffee shop off of fifth with the cute barista, you know? It was the thought that counts.”

“I’ve never been.”

“No? You’re missing out, man. It’s called Banshee. Killer coffee, even better pastries.”

They chat idly while Stiles fixes Isaac’s computer. He tells him he’s going to try a new code so hopefully it won’t crash again, then proceeds to ramble about the cost of movie theater popcorn. Isaac feels vaguely charmed, especially when Stiles asks what movies he likes then proceeds to name all of Isaac’s top five.

He fixes the glitch again and they’re both left staring at the green hill and blue sky.

“C’mon, man,” Stiles says. The mouse jumps down to the Google Chrome button and he brings up a search engine. Stiles types faster than the letters can appear on the screen and Isaac is suddenly faced with a whole page of badass looking desktop backgrounds.

“That’s a lot of fire,” he tells Stiles. “And sharks. And women in bikinis.”

“Hey,” Stiles warns, scrolling down the page. “Don’t make me bring out the big guns. And by big guns I mean I photoshopped Dwayne Johnson into that Twilight Sparkle picture at two in the morning last night. So you shut your mouth.”

Stiles picks out the gaudiest looking background he can find.

“If you don’t get a real picture up here the next time you break your computer, I’m not fixing it.”

“I’m not breaking it on purpose!”

“ _Suuuure_. I think you just want to talk to me. That’s it, isn’t it?” He makes kissy noises into the phone.

“Are you sure you aren’t twelve?” Isaac asks. “Do I need to call Child Protective Services?”

“Could a twelve year old do _this_?”

Stiles hangs up on him.

The phone rings a second later and Isaac picks it up.

“Yeah,” Isaac says. “I think a twelve year old is capable of hanging up a phone.”

“Let’s pretend this didn’t happen.” Stiles makes a sound like he’s sucking air in between his teeth. “Have you been watching Shark Week?”

Somehow, this evolves to them playing online checkers. Isaac thinks Stiles cheats by hacking into the computer and using Isaac’s mouse, but every time he says something, Stiles makes an offended noise and goes, “This innocent face? _Never_.”

Erica brings him lunch without even asking if he wants any. He gives her five dollars and a smile and turns back to where Stiles is crushing him in Battleship.

“If your boss comes by, let me know and I’ll make it look like we’re fixing your computer. We need a code word.”

“A code word?”

“If you see him coming, just yell it out. Something like… ‘heyyy sexy!’”

“Do you want me to get fired for sexual harassment? No, I take that back. Derek would just crush my head like a grape.”

Stiles scoffs at him. “Uh, I’m a witness. I’ll testify that you were doing your job and that your boss has uncontrollable rage issues. Simple.”

Isaac feels a pang of recognition and it kind of sucks. He tries to calm his breathing down. Stiles doesn’t notice, just keeps going on his tangent about what is and what is not appropriate to say to your boss.

Sometime during this spiel, Isaac spots Derek prowling down the aisle, looking menacingly over the cubicles at all of his peons. He looks like a feral wolf on any given day and Erica has told Isaac before that he looks like a scared rabbit, so Isaac’s chances of getting by without being _at least_ berated are very low.

(At first Derek’s aggressiveness scared him enough to need to sit out on the balcony until he got his breathing under control, but he now he knows he’s protected by the company. There are cameras everywhere and Derek can’t touch him. Sometimes it’s not enough, but sometimes it is.)

“Hey, sexy,” Isaac hisses into the phone and the scrolling black screen pops back up on the monitor. He pulls his chair back in so his feet are under the desk and not on top of it. Derek stares at Erica for a long moment (and Derek is the first person Isaac has ever seen look only over her cubicle and not down her shirt, too) before turning to Isaac.

“Lahey,” he barks. “You’re on the phone.”

“Tech Support,” he says, gesturing unnecessarily at the receiver. “My computer crashed.”

“Did you try restarting it?”

Stiles bursts out laughing on the other line and there’s a sound like he’s fallen off his chair. Isaac’s mouth strains against a smile.

“Yes, sir.”

“Get it fixed. _Fast_.”

Derek slinks away and Isaac waits until he’s out of hearing distance before he goes, “Oh my God, you suck.”

“What?” Stiles giggles. “I helped you!”

“You can’t just laugh in the middle of it!”

“That, my friend, is what she said.”

“How is that a good thing?” Isaac tucks the phone between his ear and shoulder and puts a hand over his face. “If she’s laughing in the middle of it, I think you’re doing something wrong.”

“This is sexual harassment,” Stiles says. His voice becomes muffled as he shouts to someone, “Jackson, this guy is sexually harassing me. He’s saying people laugh at me in the middle of sex.”

“Who the fuck are you talking to?” Isaac hears Jackson respond. “If you’re talking to a sex line I’m going to skin you.”

“Don’t be jealous,” Stiles tells him. “You know I love you best, babe.” Jackson makes an irritated sound at him and Isaac gets a weird feeling in his stomach that he doesn’t know how to name. “He wants to have my babies,” Stiles tells Isaac conversationally. “We have a lot of sexual tension.”

“If you don’t shut your mouth there’s going to be a lot of tension, but it’ll only be from the physical therapy bands you’ll need after I break both your arms.”

“Then I’ll just need a nursemaid,” Stiles says cheerfully. There’s a clatter like something’s been thrown. “Hey, man, not cool.”

Isaac ends up getting thirty minutes of actual work done for the entire day, but he doesn’t feel so alone anymore.

xxx

The psychiatrist’s name is Ladonna Sheffield. She’s overweight, has bright blue eyes, and smiles at him like they’re old friends. Her office is decorated in blues and when he sinks down on the overstuffed sofa she has in the middle of the room, he notices a small fish tank built into the bookshelf next to the door. She sits in the armchair to his right and pulls out a stack of papers.

“How are you today?” she asks.

Isaac is wearing the thickest sweater he owns. If she knew him, she would know exactly how he’s feeling today. “I’m okay,” he lies.

“How’s the arm?”

“It’s getting better.”

“When does the doctor say it can come off?”

“Three more weeks.”

She flips through some of her papers.

“Obviously, this isn’t the only time we’re going to see each other,” she tells him. “I know therapy probably isn’t something you want to do, especially not when everything is so fresh in your mind, but I’m anticipating some pretty hardcore man pain.” She says it like Stiles would, smooth and joking, and Isaac relaxes a little bit. “If you don’t want to see me at all, that’s honestly up to you. I usually don’t suggest court-mandated therapy if the patient is against it. It only causes unnecessary stress.”

Isaac nods.

“Let’s dive right in, then. Do you want to tell me about your relationship with your father?”

Isaac goes to run his right hand through his hair, then remembers the cast and lets it drop. He pulls his sleeves up over his hands and stares down at his shoes.

“I’ve never talked to anyone about it,” he says quietly. He’d never told anyone before Nurse McCall. He’s still not sure why he told her. Maybe it was her kind eyes. Maybe it was exhaustion from being afraid for so long. He’s still not sure if he regrets telling or not.

“I can see you thinking,” Ladonna says. “Vocalize.”

Isaac struggles for a moment with the words, but he closes his eyes and pretends he’s on the phone with Stiles. Talking comes easier. “I don’t know if it was the right thing to do. If I hadn’t said anything, I would still have a real house. I wouldn’t have to work so hard to keep myself alive. I wouldn’t have court dates or therapy sessions and people who barely know me wouldn’t look at me with pity. I would have all of my mom’s things and I could still go in Cam’s room and surround myself with his stuff. There are so many more things going on now than there was before. I don’t only have my dad to be afraid of. Now it’s my boss and people on the street and my landlord. I need to fend for myself and I don’t know _how_. Most kids have time to adjust, you know? Go to college, meet some friends, figure out who you are. The closest thing I have to a friend is the tech support guy I met three days ago and I don’t even know what he looks like.”

“Sweetheart,” Ladonna says softly. “Please don’t regret seeking help. There may be many more things to be afraid of, but look at all of the things you can do that aren’t scary. You can go to the movies and not worry about being home on time. You can make friends and not have to lie about that cast on your wrist. What have you been telling people?”

“That I wrestle.”

“See? That’s no way to form relationships. But guess what, Isaac? Your father is going to jail. Your father is _in_ jail. He’s being investigated for the death of your mother. There is more than enough evidence to convict him at the very least for domestic violence, including child endangerment and physical and mental abuse. He caused severe psychological issues that are apparent to me even now. He hurt you, Isaac. But he’s not going to hurt you anymore.”

For some reason, her words make something settle within Isaac’s chest and suddenly he’s spilling out everything. He tells her about the months after his mom died, when all his dad did was drink and stew. Camden had been sent off to military school, so Isaac had no one to hide behind the first time his dad hit him.

He stayed in the private school his mom had him in for another two weeks before his dad pulled him out to homeschool, and that was the beginning of his life as a hermit. He was permitted to play at the park whenever his dad was in a good mood (read: not often), so he mostly stayed home and watched TV or read books.

His dad went to work at the cemetery and Isaac stayed home alone until his shift ended. Usually, he had a bottle of whisky, then beat Isaac senseless. To this day, he believes the worst beatings were the ones where his father didn’t have to drink to work himself up.

He’d made a friend in eighth grade, a neighborhood boy named Matt who he met when he snuck out one afternoon while his dad was still at work. They played video games in Matt’s living room and marbles on the blacktop in the park. They were friends until Matt’s mom called up asking why Isaac always had a cast or a bruise or a scrape.

Isaac’s dad had been beating him for more than ten years before Isaac built up the nerve to finally turn him in, but that had been the worst night. Isaac had made someone suspicious and he was going to pay for it.

He tells Ladonna about being afraid and alone every day for twelve years. He tells her about waking up with a knot in his stomach the morning after his mom died and that eventually it just became a part of him. He talks about his mom and how much he misses her; about Camden, dead somewhere in the Middle East; about his father, who had never been a _dad_. Isaac doesn’t think there was ever a time when he hadn’t been even slightly afraid of his father.

He tells her all of the names his father called him. He had been too much of a pussy to go to military school like his brother. How stupid and useless he was.

“’Nobody will ever love you,’ he used to tell me.” He’s been talking for what feels like forever. He looks up at Ladonna, swallows, then glances out the window. “I’m scared he was right about everything.”

Ladonna puts down the pen she’s been scribbling with on and off throughout the whole session. Isaac looks up at the clock and realizes he’s been talking for an hour and a half straight.

“Sorry,” he says. He looks down at his hands. “I didn’t realize I’d been talking so long.”

“Isaac, can I touch you?” He nods almost imperceptibly and she leans forward to put a hand on his shoulder. “Isaac. You were the victim of domestic abuse for _twelve years_. You are a survivor. You are strong and you are brilliant. Look where you are now. You beat him, Isaac. You won. He’s going to jail and you have the chance to live a long and very full life. You have the opportunity to decide for yourself who you want to be.”

Isaac laughs a little bit nervously and it feels like an immense weight has been lifted off of his shoulders. He’s still bent under the decade of fear and guilt and anger, but it’s better. He’ll get there. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

Ladonna tosses her pad of paper down onto the coffee table and smiles at him. “How about you begin at home?”

xxx

Isaac goes in the next morning to find several Post-Its of various colors stuck to his monitor. He pulls them off and spreads them out on his desk as he powers up the computer. Most of them are different variations of, “Stiles from tech support called,” but some of them are threats Derek made, what Boyd and Erica had for lunch, and, finally, a proposal to come to a party on Friday. They’re all in Erica’s handwriting and they progressively get more and more sloppy.

“He’s super cute, I want one,” she’s written on one.

“Your tech support friend voted against pastrami for lunch. I like him.”

The desktop image on his computer has changed. This time, there’s a giant rainbow unicorn with a machine gun as a horn leaping majestically across a sea of blood. An MS Paint window opens a second later, revealing a note in shaky handwriting: “Get a new desktop background fool.” There are also a lot of frowny faces, happy faces, and what might be a dancing taco.

He picks up the phone and dials tech support.

“This is Jackson.”

“Hey, is Stiles there?”

“Stiles,” Jackson yells. “Your boyfriend is alive.”

Stiles makes a rude sound at him and answers. “Hey, buddy. What’s up?”

“Hey. Sorry I wasn’t around yesterday. Doctor’s appointment.”

“Everything okay?”

“No.” The word comes out of Isaac’s mouth before he’s even processed it. He’s filled with the sudden, overwhelming urge to sit down and tell Stiles everything he’d told Ladonna. He feels an odd sense of trust when it comes to Stiles.

“Want to talk about it?”

 _Yes_. “Not really.”

“Okay. Did you catch the 80’s movie marathon last night?”

Stiles is easy to talk to. He taps into vocal cues Isaac doesn’t even realize are there and he kind of makes Isaac feel like the most socially incompetent person alive, while also making him feel completely at ease. Stiles laughs at everything and his laugh is contagious and he’s sarcastic and witty and at the end of the night, Stiles says, “Give me your number so we can text.”

“Oh, great,” Isaac tells him. “You don’t want to stop your reign of terror at work; you need to sink your claws into my personal life, too.” He gives him his number anyway. His personal life would improve if Stiles was in it, anyway.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You try to get me in trouble with my boss all the time. If I’m not careful, you’re going to text me at the most inopportune time. I’ll be walking on the sidewalk and accidentally bump into another person, who will fall into the street, cause of five car pile-up, and it’ll all end with a mushroom cloud rising into the setting sun.”

“I think you’re being a little overdramatic here.”

“I think not.”

They hang up because Stiles’ shift is over, so Isaac actually works the last hour and a half. He tries to type a little bit faster since he’s finished zilch all day, but the cast makes it difficult and his phone is buzzing nonstop from his pocket.

He checks his messages while he walks out with Erica. There are almost one hundred texts, all from an unknown number, but most definitely from Stiles. They’re different variations of, “Hey, are you working?” as well as several texts with only one letter. He’s obviously trying to be annoying.

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Isaac texts back.

“ _Caaaan you feeeel the looove tonight_?” Stiles replies. Then, “ _Are you leaving_?”

“ _Yeah. Heading home_.”

“Did you meet someone?” Erica asks on the elevator ride down, arching one waxed eyebrow. “You’re going to parties behind my back, aren’t you?”

“No.” Isaac hits the first floor button and the elevator doors close. “It’s that guy from tech support. He wants to ruin the life I have outside the office, too.”

“ _There’s a lotr marathon on tonight_ ,” Stiles says. Isaac is too focused on texting him back to panic about being in such a small space. “ _You gonna catch it_?”

“ _Sure._ ”

Erica’s finger appears and pokes him in the cheek as the door opens. They step out into the lobby and he gives her a funny look.

“You’re smiling like an idiot,” she tells him. “I’ve seen that smile. He’s not just the tech guy.”

“What?” he says. “You’re delusional.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” She pats his cheek and goes off towards the parking garage.

Isaac stands at the bus stop in the drizzling rain and comes to terms with the fact that the unidentifiable feeling he’s been having is not so unidentifiable after all. He thinks about it on the ride home, how his stomach tugs when Stiles laughs. How he’s trusted Stiles so blindly right from the start. It’s a crush, something stupid and meaningless in the scheme of things.

He almost wishes he would freak out about it, because being afraid is one thing he knows how to do, but he’s not afraid of being attracted to Stiles.  Except that now that Erica’s said something, he’s hyperaware of his feelings. He reads back through their short conversation and wonders if Stiles feels funny when they talk, too.

He texts and asks if he should get Chinese takeout or order a pizza.

“ _Pizza_.” Stiles responds as Isaac’s stepping into the elevator in his apartment building. “ _There’s this place called tomato tomatoe near the office. They deliver all night and have a kickass sausage pepperoni._ ”

Isaac gets back in his own head long enough to peer down the hallway towards his apartment before leaving the elevator car. There’s nobody waiting there. When he unlocks the door, his apartment is just as empty as he’d left it.

He goes into the designated bedroom area to change and tosses the phone down onto the bed, which is the only piece of furniture in the space besides the dresser. He pulls out one of the few shirts he’s managed to salvage from his dad’s house and trades it out for his sweater and gray shirt. He throws his jeans into the small pile of laundry in the corner and puts on a pair of sweatpants.

He calls and orders a pizza as he wanders into the stark kitchen. He stares at the calendar taped up to the refrigerator and tries to tamp down the panic that rises up like bile in his throat. He forgot he has court tomorrow. Ladonna had told him that he probably wouldn’t be called up as a witness, that that would be later, but it was important for him to be at the courthouse.

He putters around his small apartment while he waits for the pizza, clenching and unclenching his hands and trying to release some of the negative energy dancing beneath his skin. He stares at his nearly empty bookshelf, then moves to look out the window that faces the brick of the next building over.

His phone rings with one of those generic, preinstalled tones. Caller ID says it’s Stiles, so he picks it up.

“Hey, man.”

“Hey. You’re gonna watch, right?”

“Just waiting for my pizza.”

They chat aimlessly about work and about the idiots Stiles has to deal with. The nervous energy begins to leech out of Isaac and he sits down on the small couch, his legs thrown over the length of it. They talk until the pizza arrives. When it does, Isaac tells Stiles to hold on a minute.

It’s the first time anyone’s ever knocked on his door and, against all logic, he begins to shake minutely. But the man behind the door is named Bobby and he is not Isaac’s father.

“Eight fifty,” he says after he hands Isaac the pizza. While he counts out his money, Bobby looks around his apartment. “You don’t have a lot of furniture.”

“I just moved in.”

“You’re not some nudist minimalist, are you?”

Isaac gives him ten dollars, takes the pizza, and shuts the door.

“You’re a nudist and you never told me?” Stiles says, sounding put-out, when Isaac puts the phone back to his ear.

“Why would I advertise the fact that I’m a nudist?” He carries the pizza over to the couch and sets it down on the coffee table before sitting down himself.

“My cousin’s a nudist. After high school, he ran off with his girl Maxine who’s from a nudist colony and he’s been there ever since. They have little nude babies.”

“Okay, we’re changing the subject now.”

“Okay, okay. Have you tried the pizza yet?”

“I’m too busy being horrified at _little nude babies_.”

“Don’t let weirdo Bobby throw you off,” Stiles says, ignoring the dramatic strangled cries Isaac is making into the phone. “You have never tasted pizza this good.”

Isaac flips open the lid of the box and stares down at the pizza.

“This looks so fucking disgusting.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Stiles tells him. “Haven’t you ever been told not to judge a book by its cover? Seriously. Try it.”

Isaac picks a piece up, the cheese stretching out behind it, and takes a bite.

“Holy shit.”

“I know, right?”

“Holy shit.”

“It’s good, isn’t it?”

“ _Holy shit_.” Isaac puts the pizza down because he’s scared if he doesn’t, he’ll drop it. Nothing that beautiful deserves to be dropped, ever. “Holy shit.”

“You said that already.”

“I know, but holy _shit_. What do they put in this sauce, magic?”

“Right? Right?”

Isaac turns on the television and scroll up through the channels, trying to find Lord of the Rings. For the first time in his life, he feels like an actual _person_ – sitting on the couch with a pizza, talking on the phone, watching TV. He feels normal, and for a moment he lets go of all of his fear.

Stiles keeps a running commentary throughout the entire movie. By the time they’re halfway between Two Towers, Isaac is mostly just listening to Stiles ramble on about nothing and everything. He’s lying across the whole length of the couch, feet dangling off the end, pizza box still open but empty beside him. He has his eyes close. The hand not holding the phone is resting on his stomach.

He’s not wearing a sweater. He’s not afraid. He’s not on edge, waiting for his father to break down the door.

“Are you doing anything tomorrow?” Stiles asks, words slurring a little bit. He’s been drinking Berry Weiss, which he tells Isaac is the best beer he’s ever bought. Isaac thinks he’s a little buzzed, and the way he speaks, smooth and sleepy, ignites a small fire in his belly. “We should hang out.”

Immediately, the excuse, “I need to be home when my dad gets there,” springs to mind. There’s a split second before he becomes aware that his dad isn’t an issue anymore. He can go anywhere, hang out with anyone, any time he wants. Except tomorrow.

“I have court,” he says. He should go to sleep at some point.

“Jury duty?” Stiles asks. “That sucks, man.”

Isaac makes a noncommittal noise and sits up to shut off the TV. Stiles yawns into the phone as Isaac cleans up, then heads into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He very resolutely does not think about tomorrow and court and seeing his dad for the second time since that night at the hospital.

“I bet we’ve seen each other like a million times,” Stiles says. “We don’t work on the same floor, though. You’re on two, right, and I’m on three. You know what would be weird? If my desk was right above yours. Probably not, though, because all of the tech guys are in an office in the corner…”

Isaac listens to Stiles’ absent chatter as he gets ready for bed. He picks up his toothpaste and toothbrush from the shelf above the sink and tries to brush his teeth while balancing the phone between his ear and his shoulder. He’s taken the door off the medicine cabinet so he doesn’t have to look at himself in the mirror, and it’s sitting behind the leg of the sink. He can see his ankles and his socked feet reflected in the glass.

“…and we just lost Scott to customer service, you know? He’s a nice guy and they thought he’d be better suited for schmoozing than sitting around talking to records keepers that are probably cute and are quiet but are really damn funny and who would be really cool to hang out with.”

Isaac’s stomach is up somewhere near his heart. “You’re really drunk.”

“I’m really not.”

“I’m going to sleep,” Isaac says softly. “You should, too.”

Stiles mumbles something but sighs right over it so Isaac can’t hear.

“Okay,” he says finally. “Goodnight.”

Isaac puts his phone on the corner of his dresser. Everything feels heavy and warm. He keeps thinking _talking to record keepers who are probably cute_ and his heart has floated down somewhere near his toes. He reminds himself that Stiles is drunk. That Argent owns four other offices in the state and that Stiles is one of the tech support guys for all five of them. That Stiles didn’t specify pronouns.

He goes to bed smiling for the first time in years.

xxx

It’s not raining the next morning. Isaac kind of feels like it should be. There’s a big ball of stress in his stomach from the moment he wakes up, and no matter how long he does the deep breathing meditation Ladonna had shown him, he still shakes when he pours himself a cup of coffee in a travel mug.

He’s too nervous to eat so he takes his coffee and waits at the bus stop. He’s wearing black jeans, a blue and slightly v-necked shirt, and one of his thickest sweaters. He wants to tuck his hands up under his armpits but he’s holding his cup and trying not to look like he’s going to start crying.

There’s a guy next to him muttering about having to wait in the rain and Isaac listens to him idly until he sees his bus pull up the street. Isaac steps forward a tiny bit and the man goes, “Shit, that’s not my bus.”

Isaac takes an empty seat near the middle and goes back to focusing on his breathing. In, out. In, out. He tries not to throw up on the woman in front of him.

The courthouse is less than ten minutes away and there’s a bus stop a block down. He walks the distance, hunched over, still gripping the coffee he hasn’t taken a sip of yet. His lawyer, Jennifer Blake, is standing out in the lobby and she smiles widely when she sees him.

“Isaac.” She reaches out and squeezes his arm softly. She’s wearing plum colored lipstick and Isaac thinks she’s the prettiest girl he’s ever seen. “Big day today, huh?”

“Depends what you call a big day,” he responds quietly.

“We can go in now,” she says. “You can take a seat on one of the benches if you want. I’ll be up front, just like I was for your hearing, okay? The only difference is I’m defending your mom this time.” When Isaac just stares at the floor, she adds, “We’re going to get him, Isaac. He’s never going to touch you again.”

She leads him down the hall, heels clicking on the wooden floor, into a small court room. Most of the jury is already seated and there are one or two people on the benches but otherwise the room is fairly empty.

Jennifer rubs a hand against his shoulder when he sits down, then goes to stand at one of the two tables at the front of the room, where she goes through a stack of papers and taps them loudly on the table top to straighten them out.

Isaac puts his coffee down on the ground and stretches out his fingers once, twice, before the panic overwhelms him and he stands up abruptly. The old man sitting across the aisle looks up at him but doesn’t say a word. Isaac waits and waits until Jennifer turns around, then he jerks his head towards the door. She raises her eyebrows, questioning and concerned, but he shakes his head back and goes outside.

He has his phone out of his pocket before he even knows what he’s doing. He keeps walking down the hall until he finds an empty room. He pushes inside, his breath coming out in cut off gasps, and punches the button for Stiles in his contact list. The phone rings for three whole tones before Stiles picks up.

“I’m not on jury,” he says clumsily. His tongue feels too big for his mouth and his throat is closing up and he’s freaking the fuck out. He wishes he could say it’s been a while since he’s had a panic attack but he has one just about every time he turns around.

“Whoa, whoa, calm down,” Stiles says. “Are you okay?”

“Look,” he says, tugging a hand through his hair. He looks up at the ceiling in distress and continues to pace quickly, back and forth with military-like precision, across the floor in front of the judge’s bench. “Look, I’ve never had a friend, not since I was thirteen, so I don’t – I don’t know if I can tell you this, especially since we only met, like, three days ago, but I’m scared out of my goddamn mind and I don’t know who else to call, because my lawyer’s nice but I’m pretty sure she eats small children in her spare time, but I guess that’s a good thing because she’s really good at what she does. Fuck, Stiles.”

“Back up,” Stiles says. “No jury. That’s established. You… have a lawyer? Are you on trial?”

“She’s not my lawyer today.” He knows he’s not making sense, that he should start from the beginning, but things are going black around the edges and his ears are starting to ring so he walks faster and talks in stuttery, rambling sentences. “She’s representing my mom, I guess, but I didn’t know you could represent someone who’s _dead_. Or maybe you can’t. I don’t know. Maybe she’s representing me as an extension of my mom because this is an extension of my trial?”

“Isaac,” Stiles says. “You’re losing me here.”

“I’m shutting down,” Isaac says. He sits down on the floor, right in the middle of the room, and pulls his knees up to his chest. Sometimes he wishes he wasn’t so tall so that it would be easier to fold right up, compact and safe without so much surface area to hit and kick and punch.

“Hey.” Stiles drops his voice down several octaves, down to something quiet and soothing. Isaac continues to breathe erratically against the bend of his knee. “You’re just having a panic attack, okay? I used to get them, too, back after my mom died. Just – think of something else. Think of something that makes you happy.”

 _You_ , Isaac thinks, but he doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing else that makes him happy.

After a moment, Stiles takes a deep breath and says, “Then I’ll tell you something that makes me happy.” Then he takes Isaac back to the lake he and his parents used to stay on every summer. He describes the log cabin right on the water; how he would wake up in the morning and look out the window to see one lone rowboat paddling along, the sun slanting behind him. He talks about how he would stand on the dock, feet swathed in cold fog while he tipped his face back, relishing the soft orange the sun cast on his closed eyes. His dad would make bacon in the scratched frying pan and his mom would sing along with the birds, soft and sweet, while he sat at the kitchen table, skinny legs pulled up to his chest. He tells Isaac that he thinks those are some of his happiest memories, that time with his parents on the lake.

“The kind of happiness that leaves you breathless,” Stiles whispers. Isaac keeps his eyes squeezed shut, trying to trap himself in that moment. It fades as the silences stretches on. “Are you holding your breath?”

Isaac opens his eyes to stare at the denim of his jeans and exhales.

“Yeah.”

“I heard somewhere once that holding your breath can stop a panic attack.”

“I’ve never tried that.” Isaac turns his head and rests his cheek on his knee. He feels vaguely warm, like the sun’s beating down on his back. “I’ll have to remember.”

He listens to Stiles’ quiet breathing for a moment until Stiles says, “You wanna start from the top?”

Isaac steels himself for the paralyzing shaking that always begins when he thinks about his dad, but it doesn’t come. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and pretends to have his hand fisted in Stiles’ shirt. Sometimes thinking about Stiles like that, arms wrapped tight around Isaac, protecting him, makes him feel dirty, like he’s thinking about something else, too. But he doesn’t. He just wants Stiles to care about him.

“I’m going to see my dad today,” he whispers. “This is the second time in two weeks. Because two weeks ago, I finally told the nurses that he’s hurting me. That’s he’s _been_ hurting me.”

“Oh,” Stiles says softly.

“I don’t want to sit there and listen to him lie about killing my mom. I know he did. Today isn’t even about me, I don’t want to _be_ here, but Jennifer wants me in case she needs to use me as a witness. How can I be a witness? I was eight years old.”

“Isaac…”

“I don’t think I can do it.”

“Do you want me to come?”

“Yes,” Isaac says. He hears the distant sound of Stiles’ keys jangling. “No. No. We can’t meet like this.”

Stiles sighs quietly into the phone. “What can I do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Isaac squeezes his head between his legs, knees tight against his temples. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

“You can always call me,” Stiles says fervently. “Anytime. For anything. Okay, Isaac? You’re not alone.”

He wants to say _thank you_ , but the words get caught in his throat.

“Go ahead,” Stiles says. “Call me when you get out.”

“Okay.” There’s a lull where he can thank Stiles. He starts to, but he breaks off every time because, for some reason, those two words are suddenly scarier than saying yes to Nurse McCall. He can’t do it. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“I’ll be here.”

After they hang up, Isaac stays seated on the floor, curled in on himself. Then he gets up and heads back towards the court room, fingers still tight around his phone. He stalls outside the door, not wanting to make a scene by walking in in the middle of the case, but then Jennifer pokes her head out.

“Good timing,” she says. “Are you okay?”

“Let’s get this over with.”

xxx

“Do you have an Xbox? We can play Halo or Bioshock or something.”

“No, all of my stuff’s still at my dad’s.” Isaac leans over to grab a pillow to put under his laptop so the underside stops burning his legs. “I’ve got World of Warcraft.”

“Oh good,” Stiles says. “A game of teamwork. Did you get tired of me kicking your ass at chess? And checkers? And Scrabble? And shuffle board? And –“

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

It’s Sunday night and Isaac’s curled up in his bed, phone pressed against his ear and computer in his lap. He’s spent the past two days in his pajamas and either on the couch or in his bed, most of the time with Stiles chattering on in his ear. It makes the silence seem less scary.

He’s not sure what happened yesterday. He knows that the jury decided his dad was guilty and that he was definitely sentenced – Isaac thinks Jennifer had said twenty-five to life – but he can’t remember much more. Stiles’ words had helped him through the first twenty minutes or so, but as soon as his dad sought out his face in the crowd, a panicked buzzing started up in his ears and his hands began to shake.

He hadn’t been called up as witness, though his name had been mentioned a couple of times. The whole trial was awful and painful and it brought up so many memories that Isaac had tried to stamp down that, more than once, he had almost gotten up and left. It was hard to sit through, maybe even worse than watching his dad loom over him, belt in hand. At least then he knew it would end.

Throughout the trial, Isaac’s dad had remained stony-faced and unapologetic, right up until the jury came through with the verdict. Then his face had turned red, the vein in his forehead bulging in rage, and Isaac had had to grip the back of the seat in front of him to stop himself from bolting. He’d seen that expression more times than he’d like to count.

After his dad had been escorted away by the bailiff, Jennifer had come to Isaac with a big smile on her face. “Charges of first degree murder, domestic violence, and aggravated assault,” she had whispered, peeling his fingers off the bench and relocating them to her wrist. He lightened his grasp and tried to wrap his mind around it. “That’s not to mention we’re going to slam him with child abuse, too. Isaac, he’s never going to get out of jail. You’re never going to have to see him _ever again_.”

He hadn’t called Stiles right away. Instead, he had ambled down the street, trying to let it all sink in. He caught a bus over by Argent to Banshee, the café Stiles had been talking about. He’d gotten a blueberry muffin and a peppermint hot chocolate and had sat by the window until his drink had gone cold. Then he called Stiles.

“Jury says he killed her,” he’d said quietly over the phone. “He made her shoot herself so it looked like a suicide. He got twenty-five to life.”

Stiles didn’t say anything for a long time. And then – “Are you at your computer?”

“I – no?”

“Go get it. I’m going to kick your ass in checkers.”

And that’s how they ended up here, with Stiles’ elf mage jumping in circles around Isaac’s Worgen. Stiles hadn’t asked questions Isaac didn’t want to answer, but when he was ready to talk, Stiles listened. Isaac started from the beginning, told him just about everything he’d told Ladonna. The conversation was peppered with Stiles’ ‘oh my god’s and quiet, almost keening ‘ _Isaac_ ’s.

(“You’re so brave.”

“I’m really not.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

“You would if it was the only way to survive.")

They’ve been playing online games for a day and a half and, if Isaac thinks on it too long, he’ll start to feel bad for wasting so much of Stiles’ time. But Stiles is making joyful noises as his elf circles Isaac’s wolf and Isaac allows himself to smile before he punches Stiles out of the air.

xxx

He’s talking to Stiles the next day at work when Stiles says, “Let’s go get lunch. Now. You and me.”

Isaac freezes from where he’s picking at some of the cotton strands hanging out of his cast. “Now?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “It’s not like we’re getting any work done anyway. We can go down to Mah – Meh – Mahe – that place down the street with the Hawaiian burgers.”

“Mahealani.”

“Yes, that too.” Isaac doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t think he can talk around the lump in his throat. Stiles is apparently unnerved by this because he goes, “We can go later. Or, like. Never. That’s cool.”

“No, uh.” Isaac sits up in his chair and starts to pull his socks back on. “We can go. That’s – that would be good.”

“Okay.” There was a crashing on the other end of the line as Stiles presumably knocked over his chair. “Shit. Shit.”

“I’ll meet you there?” Isaac’s heart is thumping nearly out of his chest. He feels like a child. This is a whole other kind of afraid, one he doesn’t particularly dislike. He pulls his shoes on and heads towards the elevators. He watches the numbers above the door slow on floor three and he feels a little numb with the thought that maybe Stiles is getting on right now.

When the doors open, there’s the skinny, pale guy that he sees every morning before work. He’s wearing plaid over a NASA tee shirt and when he sees Isaac, his eyes get wide. (And fuck, he’s got gorgeous brown eyes.)

“Isaac,” he says, like he’s been caught off guard. “Jesus.”

“The first one,” Isaac manages. He steps into the elevator just as the doors are sliding shut again and stands next to Stiles – he _stands next to Stiles_. He can’t stop staring and he feels dumb about it until he realizes Stiles is staring right back.

“This is weird,” Stiles says. The elevator hits the ground floor and they walk out together, then just stand in the lobby. “I’ve probably seen you ten thousand times. I didn’t even _think_ …”

“No. I didn’t either.”

Stiles has an endless amount of moles and he’s a couple inches shorter than Isaac. Isaac doesn’t know his type, but he thinks Stiles probably fits the bill perfectly. He’s got a perfect bow mouth and Isaac tries not to look at it too much, especially when it gapes open and Stiles says, “Shit, man, why couldn’t you be ugly? You make me feel inadequate. Nobody as hot as you should know that much about Star Trek. It’s against the laws of nature. Or something.”

“Speak for yourself,” Isaac responds before he can catch himself. Is this flirting? It doesn’t feel like flirting. But Isaac’s heart is going a mile a minute because Stiles just called him hot. He feels fifty levels of stupid.

Stiles’ face does this complicated thing that Isaac can’t read before he says, “Do you need to have your eyesight checked?” Before Isaac can argue with him, he drops his gaze and goes, “Holy shit, you’ve got a cast.”

“Stairs.” Stiles reaches out and takes it in his hand, smoothing his hands over the plaster, before he realizes what he’s doing and drops it abruptly. “Should we…” He tilts his head towards the door.

“Yes.” Stiles gets to the door first and holds it open for Isaac. “Does it hurt?”

Isaac looks down at his cast and moves his arm around while he follows Stiles down the street. “No. Not really. It hurt more before they set it. It itches sometimes, and it’s a pain to shower with it, but it’s nothing to complain about.”

“I feel you. I’ve broken, like, twenty-eight different bones. Hands, wrists, arms, legs… I broke some toes once, that was fun. I was on lacrosse in high school and the first time they let me play, this big guy from Maine Brook East mowed me down and broke some ribs.”

“You played lacrosse?”

“You wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at me, would you?” He flexes one of his arms and grips the little bit of muscle there with the other hand. “Nah, I maybe played ten times in all four years of high school. My buddy Scott was on the team and he convinced me to come try out, too. I think the coach was high when he let me on, but he never kicked me off, so hey. What about you?”

“My dad homeschooled me,” Isaac reminds him, feeling bad that he’s putting such a bad name on the homeschool community by putting that label on what his dad did for him. (Read: left Isaac home alone to watch TV and roam free, then came home and beat him.) “Remember?”

“Right, yeah.” Stiles won’t stop looking at him, and it’s making the pit of Isaac’s stomach feel warm, but he’s concerned that Stiles is going to run into something. They make it to Mahealani’s Hawaiian Burgers without any incident, though, and Stiles orders for them while Isaac finds a table. Then he watches Stiles chat with the cashier, who looks at him with this amused/borderline annoyed smile that Stiles doesn’t seem to notice.

A few minutes later, he sits down across from Isaac with the receipt in his hand.

“That’s Danny,” he says. “He owns this place. We played lacrosse together in high school.”

“You went to high school with him, but you still don’t know how to pronounce his last name?”

“Coach called me Biles Bilinski for the first semester of freshman year.” He sees Isaac rooting through his wallet and throws out his hand. “No, no, my treat.”

“Come on. Let me pay half.”

“No. My treat. You can pay next time.”

Isaac rolls his eyes and gives in, mostly because if he talks, he might ask, “Is this is a date?” It feels like a date. Or maybe he just wants it to be a date. (He really wants it to be a date.)

Stiles’ hand movements and facial expressions match the animation he has over the phone. Isaac wants to catalogue all of the different faces he makes because they’re all hilarious and lovely. And he keeps looking at Isaac’s mouth and Isaac doesn’t know if he has something on his face or not and he sort of wants the floor to swallow him up.

Except not really, because Stiles In Person is just as easy to talk to as Stiles On the Phone. The only difference is that Stiles In Person can see what Isaac is doing – shutting down, smiling, closing his eyes and just listening to Stiles talk. It’s embarrassing and it’s dumb and it’s awkward, but it’s also great. It’s so great.

They end up spending much longer than they should at the restaurant. Stiles keeps glancing at his watch as if he knows they’re overdue, but wants to see how long they can stretch out the time.

“I’m going to get fired,” Isaac says as they walk back. “All I do is talk on the phone and play online checkers, then go out and eat Hawaiian burgers with the guy I’ve been talking to on the phone and playing online checkers with.”

“Hey,” Stiles says, putting his hands up defensively. “At least you brought burgers back. Nobody can be mad at a person who brings them free food.”

Stiles is wrong. Derek is royally pissed – but when is he not? He’s like Grumpy Cat in human form – at his falling productivity and doesn’t even accept the burger Isaac tries to give him.

“You’d better pick it up, Lahey,” Derek says, pointing his finger right in Isaac’s face. “I will not stand behind you when Mr. Argent decides to kick your ass out those doors.”

“Yes, sir.” Isaac ducks his head in shame until Derek trudges away, leaving his burger behind. Then he calls Stiles. “We can’t hang out during work anymore.”

“He was mad?”

“Of course he was.”

“Damn. Okay. You want to meet up after work, then? They’re playing The Social Network at that movie theater off of fifth, you know?”

“Yeah,” he says, trying not to smile too hard. “I’m paying this time.”

xxx

“In celebration of getting your cast off, you should come to my party Saturday night.”

Isaac looks up from his computer to see Erica grinning at him with a lipsticky mouth over the top of the cubicle wall. She’s giving him one of her I-know-you’re-going-to-say-no, but-I-want-to-try-anyway smiles. He knows them too well.

She’s about to sit back down when he goes, “Sure. Why not?”

She straightens up against so fast she knocks something over on her desk. “What did you just say?”

“Yes.” He smiles a little bit at her. “Yes, I’m coming to your party.”

“Oh my god,” she says. “I’m going to freak out. _You_ are coming to _my_ party. My _party_. You.”

“Yes.”

“Oh my god.”

“Can I bring a friend?”

“You’re going to come to my party _and_ bring a friend? Isaac, oh my god. I need to write this date down on my calendar. I think I have a Polaroid around here somewhere. I need to preserve this moment…”

He rolls her eyes at her and she folds her arms across the separating wall and rests her chin on top of them. “What made you change your mind?”

He flexes his arm at her. It’s stiff and it still smells faintly like sweat, cotton, and plaster, but he can finally scratch his wrist again. As an added bonus, he types a lot faster when he actually has full range of motion with both hands, so Derek hasn’t gotten on his case yet.

He and Stiles hang out constantly. In fact, Stiles had gone with him to the doctor the day before to watch what he called, “the dramatic unveiling of Isaac’s other arm.” Nurse McCall wasn’t there, but one of her colleagues sawed it off while Stiles cheered in the corner.

“You have an actual arm,” Stiles said as they were leaving. He kept touching the pink, puckery skin, and it was doing awful things to Isaac’s stomach to have Stiles’ hands on him. “I had almost convinced myself you were going to pull a Bucky Barnes-esque Soviet metal arm out of there. But you have _skin_.”

Stiles has started following him basically everywhere since they met in person two weeks ago. It’s strange to think that they’ve known each other for less than a month. He feels so intensely connected to Stiles; he can’t imagine how he got by without him.

Stiles joins him in his quest to furnish his apartment. They go to IKEA and Target and thrift stores all around the city, trying to locate the best finds for Isaac’s small budget. They find a couch that doesn’t look like it’s from the 1970s (and can actually fit Isaac’s entire body on it), a used Xbox that may or may not have the Red Ring of Death at any given moment, a new set of bed sheets, a toaster oven, and a lamp.

It doesn’t even dawn on Isaac that someone else is in his house until he’s lying in bed one night, having a conversation with Stiles, who is crashing on the new couch. He has a studio apartment so he can see his entire house perfectly, including the blanketed lump that is Stiles. That’s when his heart stutters in his chest and the panic seizes him – it’s only for a split second though because he knows Stiles isn’t going to hurt him. (His dad isn’t either. He’s still in jail and he’s going to be there for a long time.)

Stiles lives with his father, which he jokes about being lame, but Isaac knows that the two of them are close. His dad is on the police force and works weird hours, so sometimes Isaac goes over to the Stilinski house and crashes there, only to catch a ride to the office in the morning with Stiles, who drives a Jeep without a muffler.

His crush has only intensified as time has passed. He’s surprised Stiles hasn’t noticed yet; he feels like he has it written on his chest in big, neon letters. ISAAC LAHEY HEARTS STILES STILINSKI! He doesn’t know what Stiles feels about him but he does know that Stiles has long, fantastic fingers that he likes to tangle in anything and everything, including Isaac’s sweatshirts and sometimes his curls. He’s also ambidextrous and takes Adderall and is so fantastic that sometimes Isaac can’t breathe.

When he texts Stiles underneath his desk and asks if he wants to go to Erica’s party, he gets a very enthusiastic yes. He tells Erica that his plus one is on board and tries not to think of Stiles in a pair of slacks.

Stiles picks him up at his apartment the next afternoon. He’s wearing black slacks and a dark blue button-down shirt, and he looks so good that Isaac has a mini bout of self-consciousness. He suddenly feels too tall, his jaw too wide, and his hair too curly. But Stiles whistles low when he gets into the car.

“Damn,” Stiles says. “You’re going to make me look bad.”

“You didn’t look in the mirror, did you?” Isaac shyly curls in on himself a little bit.

Stiles sings along to the new Panic! At the Disco song on the radio on the way over to Erica’s house. She lives in a house in the suburbs not too far from Isaac’s apartment. They can tell from down the block which one is hers; there are cars lined up for at least eight houses in either direction, on both sides of the street. All of the lights are on and there are people standing in the front lawn holding red cups.

“Ouch,” Isaac says. Stiles finds a spot behind a little orange Camaro.

“Don’t drink anything anyone gives you unless it’s sealed,” Stiles says. “If anyone asks you to go somewhere with them, don’t. If you need to go to the bathroom, have someone watch over your drink. If you or they set it down, throw it the fuck out.” Isaac looks at him, an amused smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “What? Don’t look at me like that. My dad’s a cop. I’ve heard all the horror stories.”

Erica isn’t difficult to find – she’s in the kitchen, wearing a short black tube dress and sitting on the countertop. She has a red cup in her hand and Boyd is standing at her side. When Isaac and Stiles enter the room, they catch the tail end of a story before the room erupts into laughter.

“Isaac!” Erica shouts over the noise. She shimmies off the counter and wades through the sea of bodies towards them. She teeters dangerously and throws her arms around Isaac’s chest. “And you must be Stiles, his best buddy.” She puts one hand on his shoulder and looks him up and down. “Yes. You have to dance with me.”

Stiles starts to decline but she drags him away before he can. Isaac catches the helpless shrug Stiles sends his way and smiles after him. He’s not alone for two seconds before a hand darts out, grabs his arm, and pulls him into the living room.

“Please dance with me,” the girl says, looking over her shoulder as if she’s searching for someone. “Just for a minute. My ex is here and I do not want to talk to him right now.”

She’s tall with dark brown hair and the deepest dimples he’s ever seen. She smiles up at him apologetically and winds her arms around his neck.

“I’m Allison,” she shouts over the music.

“Isaac. Nice to meet you.”

“You too. Thanks for helping me hide.”

“Is he bothering you?”

“No. Not like that, anyway. He wants to get back together. I don’t know if I want to. You know?” She bites her lip. “We’ve been together since high school, so it kind of sucks. He’s a good guy.”

“So why don’t you want to get back together with him?”

“He wants to get married.” She bulges out her eyes like this is the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard. “I’m only twenty-one. I don’t want to get married yet. I’m too young.”

“My parents got married at nineteen,” he tells her. He leaves out the part where their marriage ended with a bullet to the head and twelve years of child abuse.

“That’s sweet,” she says, sounding genuine, “but I don’t think it’s for me. I want to do something. Change the world. Maybe join the army or the peace corps or something. My dad was a soldier. Now he does freelance detective work for the police department.”

“Why don’t you go and do something then? Take him with you.”

“He’s not into that kind of thing. He wants to help, but on, like, a home-front kind of thing. Working with the elderly or troubled kids or something like that. Not living on the African savannah and building wells. He likes it _here_. He wants to stay. We grew up in a small town just north of here and this city still seems awfully small. I’m too close to home.”

“What’s wrong with home?” Isaac wishes he had a home to miss when he went away.

“Nothing! I just want… more, you know?”

“Why’d you go out with him in the first place?”

Allison bites her lip for a moment while she thinks. “He’s a nice guy. He would do anything for anyone. When I was with him, I was better. A better version of myself. You know?”

Isaac smiles down at her and thinks of how his fear fades when Stiles is around. “Yeah.”

He and Allison talk for a long time. He keeps his arms wound lightly around her waist and hers up around his neck, and they sway to the music and lean close to hear over it. Sometimes, he catches glimpses of the back of Stiles’ head from where he’s still wrapped up with Erica. His chest feels a little bit hollow, but also full to bursting.

Eventually, Allison goes, “Oh, crap.”

Isaac looks away from Stiles to see Scott, the other guy who rides in their elevator and Stiles’ best high school friend. His mind puts it all together fast – he thinks of Scott pleading on the phone in the morning for his girlfriend Allison to please take him back. It all makes sense.

“Isaac,” Scott says, sounding somewhat surprised. “Hi.”

“You know him?” Allison asks Scott. Then she turns to Isaac. “You _know_ him?”

“This is Stiles’ boyfriend,” Scott tells her. Allison gets a look on her face like her whole plan is falling apart.

“Dammit,” she says, stepping back away from Isaac. “I pick one guy in the room and _of course_. Why didn’t you say something?”

“I’m not dating Stiles,” he says. No matter how fluttery it makes his stomach feel, he thinks this is important to point out.

“You probably need to check with him about that,” Scott says distractedly. “Allison, can we please talk?”

She looks between the two of them and sighs. “Fine.”

As they leave, Isaac tries to locate Stiles again and sees him by the back door with Erica. He starts through the crowd towards the two of them, and just before he gets there, Erica leans up and kisses Stiles on the cheek before disappearing into the crowd. Stiles turns around abruptly with an unreadable look on his face, but he grins when he sees Isaac.

Isaac gestures towards the front door with his head and Stiles widens his eyes a little bit and nods. He turns back around and walks back through the throng of dancing bodies, looking back only when he feels Stiles latch onto the fabric of his coat at the elbow.

The music is still loud outside, so Isaac keeps going, heading back towards the car. All he can think about is what Scott had said. _Stiles’ boyfriend._

“Do you want to go?” Stiles jogs up a little bit so they’re walking side by side. Isaac looks down at him and notes, with a sinking heart, that there’s a lipstick print on the corner of his mouth.

“What about Erica?”

Stiles looks at him a little peculiarly and says, “What about her? Did you want to say goodbye?”

“You don’t?” Isaac tries to convey everything with just one look, but Stiles keeps staring back at him with a confused look on his face. “You’ve got lipstick…” He gestures at his own mouth and watches Stiles wipe it away with his hand, then his sleeve.

“She was hitting on me hard, man,” Stiles tells him. He turns his face a little bit, his expression questioning, and Isaac nods that the lipstick is gone. “I wasn’t into it. She was drunk, anyway.”

“Would you have been into it if she wasn’t drunk?”

“No.” Stiles ducks his head and runs a hand over the back of his hair like he’s embarrassed. He doesn’t look at Isaac when he says, “I’m sort of interested in someone else.”

Isaac manages to say, “Okay.” His heart is doing a million different things in his chest.

Stiles looks up at him through his eyelashes kind of shyly and asks, “What about Allison? Kinda weird, man, dancing with my best friend’s on-again-off-again.”

“It was a ploy to make him jealous. Apparently.”

“You weren’t, like… gonna steal her away from him? Sweep her off her feet?” He says it so nonchalantly, but Isaac can see that there’s something more to it. Something’s bothering him.

“Hey,” Isaac says. “She’s Scott’s. Off-limits. I get it.”

“No, that’s not—“ Stiles cuts himself off and stops walking. Isaac stands with him, waiting, watching Stiles’ fingers stretching spastically as he thinks. Then he moves one hand forward and tucks his index finger around one of Isaac’s belt loops.

Isaac can’t hear anything except for their breathing and his heart pounding in his ears. Stiles won’t look at him at first, training his eyes instead on Isaac’s chest. Then, slowly, he looks up at Isaac with a nervous expression on his face. When he sees that Isaac isn’t going to pull away or hit him or start yelling, he tugs a little bit on his belt loop, pulling him in closer.

Stiles tastes like the Gatorade he’d had in the car on the drive to the party. They exchange a series of small, closed-mouth kisses, and Isaac feels like his heart is going to burst. Stiles loops the arm not holding onto Isaac’s pants around his waist and Isaac moves even closer.

Isaac isn’t even aware that they’ve moved back until he feels Stiles connect with one of the cars lining the road. Stiles starts to grin like a maniac and Isaac pulls away, just a little bit. They’re up against a silver Porsche and Isaac looks back towards the house, hoping the owner isn’t going to walk up and find them here.

“Stop doing that,” Stiles says. His hand comes up and he smooths his fingers over Isaac’s jaw.

“What?”

“When you’re nervous, you do this thing.” He touches the bow of Isaac’s top lip. Isaac kisses the pad of his finger and Stiles swallows audibly. “You touch your lip with your tongue and it’s driving me goddamn crazy.”

He leans down and they’re kissing again, Stiles’ hand smoothing over the plane of his shoulders. Isaac breaks his mouth away and starts trailing kisses across Stiles’ cheek, up along his jaw, and down to his throat, which he has to bend a little to reach. Stiles bunches the back of Isaac’s sweater in his hand and makes a low noise in his throat.

“Oh, fucking come on,” a voice shouts behind them. Isaac steps back a little bit and Stiles cranes his neck to look behind them. “Get off my car, Stilinski.”

There’s a guy in a blazer walking towards them, a small red headed girl by his side. His face is sharp and sculpted and he just _looks_ mean. The girl next to him has bright red lipstick on and she purses her mouth at the two of them, handbag caught in the crease of her elbow.

“You have awful timing, man.” They rearrange until Stiles is standing by his side. Isaac feels nervous deep in his gut, wondering what Stiles thinks of someone catching them. He himself is embarrassed to have been caught making out against someone’s car, but he also doesn’t really want to have stopped. “Can you come back in, like, ten minutes?”

The guy sneers at him and walks around the car to the front seat. He points his finger menacingly in Stiles’ face while the girl waves at them from across the car. Neither of them say anything, but Stiles babbles on about how it’s a free country and he can make out with anyone anywhere he wants. As they drive away, the guy rolls down the window and flips him off.

“That’s Jackson,” Stiles says. “He works in my department.”

“Is he also homicidal?” Stiles starts back towards the Jeep and Isaac follows.

“Probably.”

“Oh, that’s comforting.”

Isaac gets in the passenger side of the car, watching Stiles slide in on the other side and start up the engine. He doesn’t go anywhere, though, just straps himself in then stares straight out the windshield, like he’s looking for someone. Then he relaxes back into his chair and turns his head to look at Isaac.

“That was pretty awesome back there,” he says. “Not the being caught by my currently psychopathic coworker – the, uh.” The gestures vaguely towards his mouth, but Isaac can’t stop looking at the blush rising in his cheeks. “The thing with the kissing. Did you – you were into that too? Right?”

Isaac reaches across the gearshift and hesitantly takes Stiles’ hand to press his thumb against the jut of his wrist bone. Stiles looks up at him from underneath his eyelashes and licks his lips. Isaac doesn’t know what to say – _yeah, I was way into it_ doesn’t sound as smooth or suave as he wants it to – so he pulls Stiles’ hand a little bit closer and kisses his pulse point.

“Is it still okay if I stay over?” Stiles asks, then cringes visibly. “Wow, not the time. Uh. I didn’t mean like that? I meant – crashing. On the couch.”

“Yeah,” Isaac says breathlessly. He’d forgotten that that was the plan. Suddenly, the idea of Stiles sleeping in his apartment makes him feel a little bit lightheaded. Good. Very good. Excellent. “Yeah, of course.”

Stiles fiddles with the knobs on the radio the entire drive home. He finds something by Fountains of Wayne and sings along, but every so often he’ll look over at Isaac and his face will split into a smile. He’s got Isaac grinning as they pull into the second row of parking spaces in the lot.

Unlocking the door with Stiles bouncing on the balls of his feet behind him feels a lot more charged than usual. He does a mental run-through of his house, wondering if he’d cleaned up before he left, but then he remembers that this is _Stiles_ and Stiles has seen his apartment in every state from completely bare to not cleaned for days. He doesn’t even doubt that some of the clutter on the coffee table and in the kitchen is Stiles’.

Stiles goes into the bathroom first while Isaac tries half-heartedly to clean up. He’d gotten an actual laundry basket at Target, so he throws all of the wayward clothing into it. Stiles had liked it best because it sprang back up when you pushed down on it. Isaac thinks it was because it’s the color of his Jeep.

Stiles emerges from the bathroom wearing the spare pajamas he’d stashed in the linen closet (which consists of four towels, two wash cloths, some deodorant, and a pair of Stiles’ jeans). He hovers awkwardly in the space between Isaac’s bed and the bathroom door, lithe fingers clenching and unclenching at his sides.

“We don’t have to do this,” Isaac says. He watches Stiles’ expression sink for half a millisecond before being overtaken by his nonchalant, why-should-this-bother-me look. He opens his mouth, ready to make some sort of offhanded remark about how it didn’t mean anything, anyway, but Isaac cuts across him to clarify. “The awkward thing. We, uh. We kissed? And we both liked it. So we should… not be weird about it.”

Stiles looks relieved. “Okay. I’m down with that.”

“And you should – you should sleep in my bed. With me.” Isaac can feel himself beginning to shake. He doesn’t know if it’s fear or adrenaline or happiness, but he kind of likes it. Stiles gapes at him, brow drawn, and gestures over his shoulder with his thumb.

“You… sleep in your bed?”

“We’re not going to do anything,” Isaac says quickly. He takes a step forward, towards the bathroom. “But there’s, like. No reason for you to sleep on the couch when we like kissing each other. Especially since it’s not weird.”

“No. Not weird.” Stiles clears his throat and makes an aborted movement towards the bed. Then he goes forward, pulls back the blankets, and steps away. “Which is your side?”

“Uh, the left.” He doesn’t tell Stiles that there’s a steak knife in the drawer on the left or that there’s a reason he charges his phone there. Stiles still hasn’t said anything about the three dead locks on the door.

“Okay. Cool.” Stiles gets into the bed on the right side and sits there crossed-legged. Isaac turns the tv around on its stand and throws Stiles the remote. He looks satisfied with having something to do, so Isaac goes into the bathroom and closes the door.

There’s an orange toothbrush on the edge of the sink. It’s usually there, because Isaac doesn’t bother to put it away, but it suddenly feels much bigger than just that. He grabs the red one and brushes his teeth hastily, glad he doesn’t have a mirror to look into. He probably looks crazed.

After he washes his face, he stands with his hands gripping either side of the sink.

He’s not afraid of Stiles. He’s not afraid of what they’re doing, what they’re going to do, what’s going to happen to and with and between them. He’s afraid because he can’t remember a time when he’d gotten exactly what he’d wanted. Getting away from that abusive relationship, his father going to jail, building a friendship with Stiles, finding out Stiles feels the same way – it was all too good. It couldn’t last for long. Something was going to go wrong.

He pulls off the clothes he wore to the party and kicks them into the corner, where Stiles’ slacks are laying balled up. He puts on the stack of clothes he’d left in the bathroom when he had changed the first time: a pair of sweatpants and a navy blue tee shirt.

He leaves the bathroom door open when he’s finished and stands shyly in the doorway. Stiles looks up from where he’s watching reruns of Reba and openly checks him out. Isaac’s scalp runs cold, then hot, and he feels weird everywhere. Not bad weird, just – weird.

“What?” he asks self-consciously. He crosses his arms over his chest and hunches down a little bit so that maybe he’ll feel a little less tall.

Stiles smiles at him, eyes still roaming. “You look good.”

“I’m wearing pajamas.”

“I know, but you – you look really good in them.” Stiles licks his lips and Isaac tries not to let that make his stomach twist. “I always thought so. Now I can appreciate it.” He looks uncertain for a moment and his eyes flick up to meet Isaac’s. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah. I question your taste level, but it’s cool.” He doesn’t know how Stiles can find Isaac so attractive while he finds himself so ugly. Isaac wants to trace all of his moles like constellations.

“You looked awesome in your party clothes.” He completely misses the point, or maybe he’s avoiding it. Isaac crosses the room and climbs into the bed on the other side. Stiles is still sitting cross-legged. “Did you not get that with the kissing?”

Something zips through Isaac’s heart because _he can do this_. “No, not really. Maybe you should try again.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Stiles leans over and kisses him, first with his mouth closed, and then with his tongue teasing the edge of Isaac’s mouth. Isaac parts his lips and Stiles shifts a little bit to get a better angle, his hand coming up to card through the hair on the back of Isaac’s head.

Isaac likes kissing Stiles. He gives it the same enthusiasm he gives everything, which means his hands are everywhere and he’s constantly making noises that go straight down Isaac’s spine. Isaac doesn’t have a lot of experience to compare it to, but he’s pretty sure that Stiles would be considered a good kisser. A great kisser. Maybe the best kisser in the world.

Isaac somehow ends up on his back, Stiles bent over him, sucking a bruise on his jaw. Isaac twists his fingers into the back of Stiles’ faded AC/DC tee shirt and says, a little bit more breathlessly than he would have liked, “Do it lower.”

Stiles pulls back abruptly and gives him this look that’s half confusion, half arousal.

Isaac goes, “Oh my _God_ , I meant my – chest, my shoulder, I don’t – I’ve got court coming up and I don’t want him to know.”

Stiles grins at him. “Okay, okay, I get it,” then pulls Isaac’s shirt up. He wiggles his eyebrows comically, but then he runs his fingers across Isaac’s stomach and it really isn’t funny anymore. Stiles has this look on his face like he’s in complete awe and Isaac is trying to concentrate on keeping all of his blood from rushing south. So far he’s not succeeding.

Stiles glances up at him, pupils blown wide, then licks a stripe right over Isaac’s left nipple. Isaac lets out a choked off breath and curls his toes. Stiles ghosts his breath over Isaac’s pec before biting down right below it. He sucks hard and it hurts but Isaac is sort of seeing stars. It feels so good he thinks he could die.

“You need to,” Isaac says when Stiles is done there. His tongue feels too big for his mouth so he tugs on the short hairs on the back of Stiles’ head to get his attention. “You need to not do that anymore.”

“Is… is this not okay?” Stiles looks wrecked. He bites down on his already red bottom lip and Isaac catches a groan in his throat.

“No, it’s – it’s good. It’s _so good._ That’s the problem.”

Stiles’ eyes go wide and he glances down and, yep, as if Isaac’s isn’t embarrassed enough. Sweatpants are not good for erections and neither are boxers, apparently, because Stiles kind of smiles sheepishly and gets out of Isaac’s personal space.

Isaac pulls the blankets up and throws an arm across his face.

“Are you embarrassed?” Stiles asks, voice low and amused. “Isaac, you don’t have to be embarrassed. That’s cool, man. It’s not like it’s not mutual.”

“You are not helping.”

“Sorry. Think of unsexy things. Like…” Stiles trails off and the bed moves around as he makes himself more comfortable. Isaac peeks out from under his arm to see Stiles lying on his side, holding his body up with his arm. He gets this mischievous look on his face and Isaac groans in anticipation. “Dead kittens,” Stiles drawls. Isaac feels a pressure and he looks down to see Stiles walking two of his fingers up his chest. “Bobby the pizza guy. Lettuce.”

“This isn’t working,” Isaac says, laugh rumbling in his chest, and Stiles’ fingers disappear.

“Shh,” Stiles tells him. “You’re ruining the moment.”

“Yeah.” Isaac moves his arm and looks up at him. “That’s kind of the point.”

“Snake skin. Weird stains on the futon in the basement. Garlic breath.”

“Ughhh.” Isaac kind of wants to roll onto his stomach and hide beneath the pillow but that might not be a great idea as of yet.

“Getting up early on weekends. People who go see the movie but don’t read the books. Bellybutton lint.”

“Okay, okay.” Isaac sits up. “Boner deactivated. Thanks for all your very helpful help.”

“De nada.” Stiles collapses back into the pillows on his side and stretches out. His boxers are still a little bit tented, but Isaac doesn’t want to draw attention to it. He reaches over and shuts off the lamp before things get weird again.

Reba’s over and Stiles makes a noise of disgust when Two and a Half Men comes on. He picks up the remote again and flicks through the channels, then gives up and leaves it on some Spanish soap opera. Isaac has the blankets pulled up to his chin Stiles looks down at him fondly.

“You watching this?” he asks. When Isaac shakes his head, he shuts it off and pulls the blankets up around him. Their feet bump and Stiles scoots closer, nearing the edge of his pillow. “You’re kind of awesome.”

“Pot calls the kettle,” Isaac responds. He reaches out, searching for Stiles’ hand; when he finds it, he winds their fingers together. “You’re not too bad yourself.”

xxx

“Can I tell you something?”

They’re sitting on the hood of Stiles’ Jeep at a drive-in a few miles outside of the city. The projector is running Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, which Isaac has never seen before and which Stiles will love until the day he dies. There’s a bucket of popcorn sitting between them and two Cokes resting in the dip between the windshield wipers and the glass.

Isaac looks over to see Stiles picking nervously at the fraying sleeve of his flannel shirt. He’s wearing glasses tonight because he ripped his last pair of contacts and Isaac thinks he’s maybe even cuter with his black frames.

“Yeah. You can tell me anything.”

“This is probably going to sound creepy,” Stiles warns. He puts a piece of popcorn on his knee and flicks it off. It lands a few feet away. “Don’t hate me, okay?”

Isaac doesn’t say anything. He leans encouragingly towards Stiles.

“So my dad’s a cop, right?” he says. “And he’s got. He’s got connections.”

“Yeah?”

“After you called me that day, remember? The court date? I asked him to get me the info on your case. What he could, you know – police records, hospital records, whatever. He’s dating Scott’s mom, who’s a nurse, so it was easy to pull strings there.”

“You read my files.” Isaac thinks of all the things he hasn’t told Stiles – the time he almost broke his back; the time his lung collapsed and he almost suffocated; the time his dad bashed his head into the wall and he had to spend a week going for MRIs and other scans to make sure he wasn’t brain damaged. The thought that maybe Stiles already knows all of that is overwhelming. He puts his head in his hands, feeling dizzy.

“Yes,” Stiles says, speaking quickly. “I only read it because I was worried about you. There were pictures, but I didn’t look at them. I just looked at the hospital records and the police reports and that’s it, okay?”

“How did you even get your dad to let you do that?”

“See.” Stiles sounds nervous. “He said no. So, uh. I visited him at work. When he was in the bathroom, I copied the files. I’m sorry. I know I’m a shitty person.”

“How much do you know?”

“I know… I know what you told me, of course. More of the medical kind of details. I only saw the hospital records from the city hospital, since that’s the closest one… they didn’t have the records from the other hospital he took you to. There wasn’t a lot of _real_ information, okay? I just – I wanted you to know.”

“Okay.”

“Are you mad?”

Isaac doesn’t know what to feel. He’s shaking from the fear that Stiles knows more than Isaac wants him to, but he also feels a little bit lighter because _Stiles was checking up on him_. The knowledge that someone cared enough to illegally go through official documents to make sure he was all right made him feel a little bit lightheaded.

“Okay,” Stiles says a bit apprehensively. “I know I’ve only known you for, like, a month, but I’ve never seen that face before and it’s starting to freak me out. That isn’t a, ‘I know a really great Stiles stew recipe,’ kind of face, is it?”

“I don’t know,” Isaac tells him and Stiles says, “Oh, okay.”

They sit in almost tense silence for a while. Isaac tries to calm himself down and understand while Stiles twitches nervously next to him. At one point, he knocks the bucket of popcorn off and it spills out onto the ground.

“Shit,” he hisses. When he goes to jump off the car to retrieve it, Isaac catches him by the wrist.

“I’m not mad,” he says. “I’m just – scared. Ashamed. I didn’t want you to know any of that because I didn’t want you to see me that way. It’s humiliating.”

“Whoa, what?” Stiles slides back up onto the hood of the car and turns to face him. “What do you have to be ashamed about? You survived. You are the bravest person I have ever met. I overstepped my boundaries, okay? I’m sorry about that, especially since it made you feel like this. But I need you to understand that the only thing you should ever be ashamed about is him.” Stiles reaches out tentatively and waits for Isaac’s approval before threading his fingers through the hair on the back of his head. “I don’t know how to make you believe that you’re worth everything.”

“We’re gonna do this now.” It isn’t really a question. Isaac closes his eyes and focuses on the soft scratch of Stiles’ stubby fingernails against the back of his head. They still haven’t talked about what they are to each other, but Isaac’s pretty sure that there’s a mutual decision that they’re exclusive. Isaac doesn’t think Stiles had time to fool around with anyone else anyway, not when he’s either at the office talking to Isaac over the computer or by his side, attached at the hip (or at the mouth).

“I mean, yeah.” Stiles rubs at the back of his neck. “We need to do it eventually.”

It’s been four days since Erica’s party, three days since Stiles kissed him awake and said, “I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t a dream.”

“I’m going to lay all of my cards out on the table, okay?” Stiles pushes his glasses back up his nose, then splays his hands out across his knees. “I like you a whole lot and for as long as we’re doing whatever it is we’re doing, it’s just going to be you. I don’t want you to think that there’s going to be someone else on the side because there won’t be. I’m gonna give it, you, us my all.”

Isaac opens his mouth to respond, then ducks his head down, laughing. “I’m not as eloquent as you.”

“That’s – something I like about you. You’re a man of few words.”

Isaac peeks out at Stiles from around his arm. “I feel the same way. About the – just the two of us. Exclusive.”

“Exclusive,” Stiles agrees. “That’s a good word.”

“So are you, like…” Isaac feels so embarrassed saying it. He can feel his dad rolling over in his jail cell. “Are you my boyfriend?”

Stiles tugs at the seam on the leg of Isaac’s jeans. “I want to be your boyfriend.”

Isaac leans over and kisses him, long and slow. Stiles catches his bottom lip between his teeth and tugs a little bit and Isaac groans, pressing closer. The frames of his glasses keep bumping up against Isaac’s cheek and he runs his thumb along the indention the ear pieces have made on his right side.

“We’re not done here yet,” Stiles says while Isaac kisses his neck. “You’re supposed to be telling me how wonderful you think I am.”

“Yeah?” Isaac runs his teeth over the shell of Stiles’ ear. He doesn’t have the energy to put on his smirk or his mask of indifference, but confidence bubbles up beneath his skin. “You’re pretty good looking.”

“That’s a given,” Stiles says, tilting his head back so Isaac can kiss his Adam’s apple. “Go on.”

“You’ve got these really bony wrists,” Isaac tells him, picking one up and kissing the pulse point there. “And your fingers are criminally long.”

“Oh my God, speak for yourself.” Stiles reaches out and runs his fingers down the thin bones in Isaac’s hand. “They’re so hot. I want them in my mouth.”

Isaac closes his eyes because that goes straight to his groin. “We’re in public,” he says in a strangled voice. “Let’s keep it PG.”

“Okay.” Stiles runs a hand through his curls and Isaac closes his eyes and leans into his touch. He feels like he’s a million miles away. “Your hair is so crazy and curly and sometimes it looks like you’ve just rolled out of bed. And I love that.”

“I bet you’d look good with a buzz.”

“Been there, done that.” Stiles kisses the faint bruise he’d left on Isaac’s jawline. “You’re so brave and kind and you suck at checkers.”

“You cheat.”

“No, you just really suck at checkers.”

“Yeah, well, you suck at spelling.”

“That’s only because the sarcastic part of my brain started eating all of the other parts and the part of my brain where intelligence used to be is now 98% sarcasm.”

Isaac kisses him hard on the mouth and Stiles almost loses his balance on the car hood.

“You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met,” he tells Stiles. It means more than the fact that Isaac hasn’t known a lot of people in his life. He wants to make Stiles understand that he’s smart and beautiful and wonderful, but he doesn’t know how.

He grips the back of Stiles’ neck and presses their foreheads together so they’re breathing the same air. Stiles’ fingers slides up his arm and he pulls at the sparse and curly hairs on his bicep.

“I can’t believe we’ve only known each other for a month,” Stiles whispers to him. “I feel like we’ve known each other forever. I trust you. I’ve never wanted to learn so much about someone I practically just met. I – I like you, except more than that.”

Isaac kisses him.

xxx

They spend a lot of time at Isaac’s apartment since Stiles doesn’t live alone. So it’s work with an instant messaging window always open, it’s lunch together at Mahealani’s Hawaiian Burgers or at Banshee (which is owned by that redhead girl that was with Jackson at Erica’s party, and, oh, isn’t that embarrassing, the way she raises one artful eyebrow at the two of them), and it’s Isaac catching a ride with Stiles back to his apartment, which is closer, anyway, and eating dinner and making out on the couch, and sometimes Stiles will stay the night, clothes on, with his limbs splayed anywhere and everywhere.

There are nights where Isaac, who had never been a heavy sleeper, mostly out of self-preservation, jerks awake to find Stiles’ brow drawn, his mouth pushed down into a frown, his hands shaking. He talks in his sleep on a normal day, but during times like these he mumbles things like, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” until Isaac shakes him awake. He hates when Stiles has nightmares because there’s nothing he can do to make them better.

Stiles tells him over breakfast one morning that when he was born, there were some complications that left his mother sick and wheelchair bound. He lived with the knowledge that his mother was going to die one day, probably soon. He was scared to go to school because he didn’t want to come home and find that she had passed while he had been away.

By some miracle, she had survived nine years, staying around long enough to see Stiles’ first steps, his first piano recital, his first broken arm. She had known and loved Scott and Stiles can recall the nights the three of them would sit and watch movies, him snuggled underneath one arm while Scott snuggled underneath the other.

He blames himself for killing his mom, something that Isaac can’t wrap his head around. But whenever he tells Stiles that he’s not responsible, Stiles either gets angry or sad and says, “I’m not going to believe it until you stop thinking you’re the reason your dad hit you.”

Isaac thinks the worst part of having someone who sleeps on top of you and kisses you awake in the morning and has a toothbrush on the sink is that sometimes Stiles will get into these moods where he’ll run his fingers across Isaac’s face and tell him how wonderful he is. This is when Isaac feels self-conscious and uncomfortable. He doesn’t want to tell Stiles that the last time he’d had any sort of positive reinforcement or that sort of encouragement, it had been from his mom.

But he plays along, tries to push away his insecurities and let Stiles know what he thinks of him.

And god, does he think of Stiles.

(And since Stiles is milling around the apartment at any given moment, Isaac has to _think of him_ in the shower. He puts his fist in his mouth and tries not to make too much noise, because it’s embarrassing, but it’s also the strangest and most amazing feeling, jerking off to the thought of someone he’s heard jerking off to him. Stiles probably thinks he’s being quiet, but he’s not, and sometimes Isaac has to go stand out in the hallway to cool down a little bit.)

Stiles shares everything with him – clothes, movies, video games, food – but it’s almost been two months since he and Stiles met, a month or so since Erica’s party, and Isaac has still never met his father. Sometimes he wants to, wants so badly to be a big enough part of Stiles’ life so he gets to meet his dad, but other times he feels a nervous buzz in his stomach that makes him want to hide instead.

It’s a Thursday morning, the day before the final hearing on his dad’s case, when he gets a text from Stiles.

“ _My dad’s shift starts at nine. You should crash at my place tonight._ ”

Isaac is momentarily distracted from the records he’s copying for Hollenbeck, Aiden to check his phone. He can hear Erica over the top of the cubicle flirting with some guy at one of the other locations, trying to coerce him into doing her records for her. Isaac wonders if that’s what he’s sounded like these past two months.

“ _Cool._ ”

“ _I have some of your clothes in my car. No need to run home. Dinner with my dad?_ ”

He types out, “ _I get to meet your dad_?” then erases it. It makes him sound hopeful or surprised or stupid, all of these things that Isaac doesn’t want to come across as. Of course he wants to meet Mr. Stilinski. Of course he does, but he’s never really met anyone’s parents in over ten years, let alone the father of the guy who slobbers all over his pillow. “ _Meet you in the elevator at 5_?” he says instead.

“ _Can’t wait xx_.”

Isaac has all of his stuff more or less together by four-thirty. He pushes his swivel chair out into the aisle and goes around to Erica’s side, where she’s watching Downton Abbey, headphones in. He sits next to her quietly and watches over her shoulder – it’s the one with Thomas and the blind soldier that Stiles still cries over – and when she finally notices him, she screams loud enough that Boyd’s head pops up from the next cubicle over to make sure she’s okay.

“You ass,” she says, reaching out to lightly slap his arm. Isaac holds his breath but puts on a smile; it’s been over two months since he’s been hit and he’s still trying to learn the difference between physical abuse and physical affection. Her slaps don’t hurt and when she’s done, she leans back in her chair and sighs. She has her knees pulled up to her chest and her feet on the chair. Her pale toes are painted bright red.

“I’m meeting Stiles’ dad tonight,” he whispers. He’s wearing a sweater but he doesn’t pull the sleeves over his hands. He isn’t afraid. Erica beams at him, rips the pink earbuds out of her ears, and leans over to give him a hug.

“This is big, babe,” she tells him. “You’re meeting the parents.”

“What do I say?” he asks. “Like, he’s… he’s a cop? What if he shoots me?” He’s not afraid that Mr. Stilinski is going to shoot him, not in the slightest. He’s just blowing off steam, humoring Erica’s taste in conversation, trying to get rid of a little bit of his excitement before he meets Stiles in the elevator. “’You’re not good enough for my son. Let me castrate you.’”

“First of all, you and Stiles are so frickin’ cute together, it makes me want to throw up. Second, you are _so good to him_. Third, you are an extraordinary human being in the first place. I don’t understand how you can be so confident and so insecure at the same time.”

“You’re the same way,” he argues.

“Yes,” she allows, “but you’re you and I’m me. You’re hot as all hell fires a-blazing and I fell off the rope in gym class in high school. Nobody even laughed at me. That’s how invisible I was.”

“Yes, but _now_.” He gestures to her as a whole. “Look at you. You’re beautiful.”

He thinks Boyd makes a warning noise from his own desk, but he’s not sure because Erica is going, “aww,” and holding his hand.

“I wish you were straight so we could bang.”

Boyd does make an audible noise this time and his head appears. “Don’t you have to go meet your boyfriend?” he asks pointedly.

Isaac reaches out and hits the escape button on Erica’s computer so that her video shrinks down and he can see the time. “Yep,” he says. “Five minutes to five.”

“He’s going to love you,” Erica calls out to him as he rolls away. “You may even replace Stiles as his son.”

Isaac rolls his eyes and pulls his shoes on, then shuts down his computer and grabs his messenger bag. Erica and Boyd are getting their stuff together, but Peter is nowhere to be seen as usual. Isaac can’t remember the last time he actually saw Peter in the office.

The elevator is full when it arrives, but Isaac squeezes in anyway, then wraps himself around Stiles to make things more comfortable. Scott is up against the wall and for once is not on his phone.

“Things okay with Allison?” Isaac asks. Stiles keeps running his thumb over the bone of his wrist and Isaac is having a hard time trying to concentrate. He hasn’t seen Allison since the party but he’d gotten the full history from Stiles.

Scott and Allison had started going out sophomore year of high school, but then she broke up with him halfway through junior year and started flirting with Jackson. But Jackson has been with Lydia since the beginning of time and she caught onto that pretty quickly – there had been a couple of other guys in between their frequent break-ups for her, but nobody else for him.

Sometimes Isaac is glad that he never went to high school. He doesn’t know how Stiles keeps up with all of this drama.

“They’re on again as of this morning,” Stiles tells him.

“I’m taking her out for dinner tonight.” Isaac doesn’t think he’s ever seen Scott smile so much.

“But we’re having brotime this weekend,” Stiles says. “You can’t back out again.”

“No girlfriends,” Scott says.

“That is not going to be a problem.” The doors open and Stiles separates long enough to twine his fingers through Isaac’s. “There is no girl about this friend.”

“Except maybe the amount of time he puts into his hair.”

“Hey!” Isaac runs a hand through his hair and Scott grins at him.

“Go eat dinner with your actual girl plus friend.” Stiles shoves him a bit in the shoulder. “I’m going to take my boy plus friend back home and make him dinner.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“So sex is in, right?” Stiles calls after him and Scott flips them off. Isaac tries not to wonder if that’s what Stiles has planned tonight. His dad leaves right after dinner and then they have the house to themselves. He tries not to think about it because if he thinks about it he’s going to meet Mr. Stilinski with an inappropriate boner and the hope to be deflowered by his only son.

Stiles keeps a hold on his hand while they walk out to the parking garage, where Stiles parks his Jeep. He squeezes it a little bit when they enter the darkness because even if Isaac isn’t shaking, Stiles knows he isn’t comfortable in small spaces or dark spaces (or any spaces).

Stiles lives about twenty minutes away from the office in good traffic. He grew up in a sandstone house near the high school and less than ten miles away from the house where Isaac used to live. If he hadn’t been sent to a private school from the time he was in preschool to two weeks of third grade, he would have grown up with Stiles.

He wonders aloud if they’ve ever met before, back when they were young.

“I think I would have remembered,” Stiles says, casting him a smile before parking in front of the house. Mr. Stilinski’s police cruiser is in the driveway and Isaac rolls his shoulders. “You okay?”

“I’m nervous,” he tells Stiles. “Nervous, but excited.”

Stiles smiles brilliantly and leads him up to the door. It’s not the first time Isaac has been to the house, not by far, but this feels different.

“I’ve never taken anyone to meet my dad before,” Stiles tells the doorknob, then looks up at Isaac through his eyelashes. “Okay?”

Isaac reaches out and touches Stiles’ elbow. “Okay.”

Stiles pulls the key out from underneath the wall-mounted lamp next to the door and lets them into the house.

“Dad?” he calls.

“In the kitchen!”

Isaac follows Stiles down the hall, then hovers nervously in the doorway until Stiles tugs him across the threshold. Mr. Stilinski is sitting at the table in a Black Hawks tee shirt and a pair of sweatpants, the newspaper open in front of him. He stands up when they walk in and Isaac notices that he doesn’t have shoes on. He doesn’t think that he’d ever seen his own father without shoes on.

“Mr. Stilinski,” he says, stepping forward and offering up his hand. If there’s one thing his dad taught him, it was how to give a good handshake. “It’s great to finally meet you.”

“Please, Isaac, call me John. And the pleasure is all mine.”

“I’m making meatloaf,” Stiles says, clapping his hands together. “Do you wanna help, Isaac?”

Isaac is just about to answer when John cuts across him. “He’s our guest, Stiles. Get him a beer. Do you like hockey, son?”

It takes Isaac a moment to realize that John is talking to him. “Uh – yeah. Hockey’s good.”

He follows John into the living room, where they sit in recliners and watch the game together. Occasionally, John will ask him a question or make a comment, but they mostly just sit in comfortable silence. Isaac can physically feel the tension draining out of him. John is soft spoken and kind and by the time Stiles comes in to tell them dinner’s ready, he and John are shouting at the TV in unison, cheering on Toews, who squeaks by one of the Predators' players and scores.

John claps him on the shoulder as they walk together back towards the kitchen and Isaac smiles back.

They talk about the office and John’s police work over dinner. Isaac gets drilled with the sort of questions he’s seen asked on TV, but he isn’t nervous anymore. John has a nice laugh and a nice smile and Isaac wants to say _I love your son_.

He just passes John the pot of mashed potatoes and bites his tongue.

After dinner, Isaac starts to help clean up the dishes, but John touches him lightly on the arm and says, “Come with me.”

He leads Isaac down the hall to his bedroom, where he pulls on his jacket and boots.

“I like you, Isaac,” he says. “I think you’re good for Stiles.”

“Thank you, sir.” He feels like his heart is going to explode and he tries to tamp down a psychopathic smile.

“I’m sorry to say that I know what happened to you, so I’m not going to make this as harsh as I would have otherwise.” John puts on his belt and makes a big show of holstering his gun. “If you ever hurt Stiles, your chances of future happiness are very low.”

“Sir, if I hurt Stiles, I don’t deserve future happiness.”

John flips the flashlight around in his hand and points it at Isaac. “That’s the answer I was looking for.”

Isaac follows him out onto the porch and waves as he pulls out of the driveway, then goes back into the kitchen and stands next to Stiles.

“You were good,” Stiles tells him as he finished washing the silverware. Isaac picks up a rag from next to the sink and starts to dry. “I don’t think he even likes Scott that much.”

“Nah.” Isaac can feel the brush spreading across his face. Stiles turns and smiles at him.

“He thinks you’re awesome.”

“I think _you’re_ awesome.”

Stiles shakes out the rubber gloves and puts them back underneath the sink, then turns and pulls Isaac against him. They kiss against the sink for a while, one of Stiles’ pruny hands twisted in Isaac’s hair. Isaac wants this every day for the rest of his life, because these past two months have been the only time Isaac hasn’t been scared since the day he was born.

Stiles pulls away a little bit and says, “I’m probably going to run the mood here by asking, but, uh. You should stay over tonight.”

“I thought that was the plan.” Isaac’s tongue feels too heavy in his mouth. He _understands._

“No, like, _stay over_.” Stiles tugs a little bit on his belt loop. “In my bed. Clothing optional.”

Isaac opens his mouth to respond, but most of the blood has left his head so he stand here gaping instead. Stiles stares at him for a moment, then steps back and ducks his head.

“Okay, crossed the line. Do you, uh, want to watch—“

Isaac cuts him off by pulling him back and wrapping his arms around him. He hugs Stiles as hard as he can and says, “Yes. Yes.”

Stiles pulls back a little bit, fingers twisted in Isaac’s shirt at the ribs, and says, “Yeah?” Isaac nods vigorously and they kiss again, more heated and demanding. Stiles tugs him away from the sink and down the hall, where Isaac pushes him up against the wall. He’s already half-hard and, judging by the noises Stiles keeps making, he’s enjoying this, too.

Stiles bites down on his collar bone and Isaac tilts his head back, eyes half-lidded. He’s about to move back to drag his teeth along the shell of Stiles’ ear when something catches his eye.

“Whoa,” he says, and Stiles breaks away to follow his gaze.

“What?”

“That’s” – he points clumsily at one of the photographs on the wall. It’s John and Nurse McCall all dressed up, arms around each other and smiling for the camera. “That’s Nurse McCall.”

“Scott’s mom,” Stiles says, and starts tugging at the hem of Isaac’s shirt. “Dad’s girlfriend.”

“That’s the nurse I told,” he says. “You were – you were there the whole time.”

“What?”’

“She was – I told her and she called your dad. I remember _talking to your dad_. And I heard him say something about how I’m his son’s age and it was you. You were there, right from the start.”

Stiles stares at him for a moment, shocked, and then says, “I was at the hospital that night. I brought Melissa dinner, but she was too busy with an abuse case, so I left it in the break room.”

“You’re my new start,” Isaac says breathlessly, and lunges forward to kiss Stiles hard on the mouth.

They stumble together up the stairs and Stiles accidentally slams the bedroom door behind them. Isaac lays back on Stiles’ bed and splays out his knees a little bit so Stiles can climb right on top of him.

“Let’s do,” Stiles pants. He steadies himself against the dresser. “I don’t think – not penetration, not today, and ugh, that sounds disgusting, like I’m going to alien sap your brain or something. But, uh, handjobs are cool, and I’d like to put my mouth on you if at all possible.”

“Stop planning,” Isaac says. “Start taking off your clothes.”

“I’m down.” Stiles shucks his shirt and his pants and then stands there in his Batman boxers and socks. “Okay, not fair. I can’t be the only naked one.”

Isaac can’t stop looking at the bulge in the front of Stiles’ boxers. He can’t stop thinking that Stiles is going to take his underpants off.

Stiles snaps at him. “Hellooo?” he says. “At least take off your shirt so I don’t feel so weird when I come over there.”

Isaac gets his arm caught somewhere near his ear in his haste and then Stiles is hovering over him. There’s so much skin and Isaac thinks he’s going to go crazy. There are more moles and birth marks than he can even begin to count. Isaac runs his fingers down Stiles’ chest, then back up over his shoulders.

“Pants,” Stiles says against his mouth, then breaks away to pull Isaac’s jeans off by the legs. Isaac’s underpants go with it and he goes to pull them back up, but Stiles says, “No, those too,” and shucks his own.

“Give me some boundaries,” Stiles says, leg bent up behind him as he takes off his socks. He turns his back to Isaac and goes to rummage around in the top drawer of the dresser. Isaac can’t stop looking at him. He doesn’t try to cover himself up. He feels safe. “Like, tell me what I can’t do. So I don’t accidentally do it.”

Isaac’s mind pulls a blank at first, but then Stiles turns around, all flushed and beautiful, a bottle of lube in his hand. Then he says, “Just don’t hurt me.”

Stiles walks up to the bed and sits down next to Isaac. “Never,” he whispers, and kisses him on the mouth.

xxx

Stiles drives him to the final hearing the next morning. Isaac had originally intended to go in alone, then have Stiles pick him up again afterwards, but once they’re outside the building, he can’t move from his seat.

“Hey,” Stiles whispers, brushing his fingers along the top of Isaac’s ear. “Do you want me to go with you?”

“Yes.” Isaac tips his head back against the headrest. “No, but yes. Please.”

They walk towards the courthouse together, Stiles gripping his hand tight and calling his boss on the phone with the other.

“Hey, Kate,” he says. “I’m not going to be able to make it in today. Family emergency.”

(Isaac’s heart swells because he’s Stiles’ _family._ )

Jennifer is standing out in the lobby when they walk in and she comes over immediately when she sees them.

“Are you ready?” She reaches out and squeezes Isaac’s arm.

Isaac laughs out a sigh and shakes his head. “I’m never going to be ready for this.”

“I’m here for moral support, though,” Stiles says, bumping shoulders with Isaac. “He’ll be all right. We’re gonna get him this time.”

“Yes we are.” Jennifer grabs onto his shoulder and shakes a little bit until he looks up at her. “You hear that? We’re going to win.”

At that moment, the doors open behind them and two police officers walk in, flanking Isaac’s dad on either side. Jennifer straightens up and regards him with slitted eyes, but Isaac looks the other way. Stiles doesn’t touch him until his dad is out of sight.

“This is the last time you’ll ever have see him again,” Jennifer whispers, then disappears down the hall after them.

“Hey,” Stiles says quietly. He rests his chin on Isaac’s shoulder and wraps his arms around his waist. “We don’t have to do this. We can go anywhere you want to. We don’t have to.”

“No.” Isaac leans against him a little bit. “I need to be here.”

They go down to the courtroom and sit in the benches closest to the door. Stiles maintains the distance between them but rubs his ankle against Isaac’s where Isaac’s dad can’t see.

Jennifer makes her final case, then his dad’s lawyer Mr. Whittemore makes his case, and then the jury goes out and talks about it. In that time, Isaac drops his head down into his hands and shakes. Stiles rubs his back in slow circles and whispers, “He’s guilty. They’re going to find him guilty.”

“He won’t stop looking at me.” He feels like he’s going to throw up. Stiles’ hand comes up to squeeze the back of his neck, and his cool fingers make everything a little bit better. “He knows. He knows everything. Oh my God.”

He feels himself spiraling down to the scared little boy he’d been for twelve years. His self-confidence begins caving in on itself and all Isaac can think about is how stupid, ugly, useless, immature, and cowardly he is.

“I’m disgusting,” he says clumsily. He can feel the tears springing to his eyes and he wipes them away irritably, still hunched over so his father can’t see. “I’m so fucking disgusting. What a waste.”

“Don’t,” Stiles hisses. “Don’t you dare say that.”

“It’s true,” Isaac says. He’s shaking so hard his teeth are chattering. “It’s true, I’m useless and I’m so goddamn ugly. I’m so fucking stupid.”

“You are _not_.” Stiles grabs him hard by the elbow and shakes and all that does is flashes Isaac back to that last night – his dad’s hand on his arm, pulling him from the bathroom and to basement stairs. Falling down them and landing hard on the concrete flooring. Not having a chance to do anything more than grunt in pain and grip his broken arm before his dad was down there with his heavy boots and unforgiving fists.

Stiles is still muttering to him, trying to get him to listen, but when the jury comes in, Isaac looks up and meet his father’s gaze. His dad is staring straight at him with unmasked disgust in his eyes. Isaac can feel it. Isaac _is_ it.

The jury decides that his father is guilty and Stiles actually fist pumps, then leans over and goes, “Did you hear that? Isaac, we won. We won.”

But Isaac can’t stop looking at his father. His face is red, the kind of red it gets right before he explodes. The police officers get up to lead him away, and soon as they’re holding onto him, he starts yelling.

“You fucking faggot!” he screams. “You piece of shit little bastard! You are disgusting! You are a disgrace! I am ashamed that you are my son.”

Stiles stands up. “He should be ashamed of you,” he shouts back. “You are a detestable excuse for a human being.”

The judge starts banging his gavel, calling for order in the court, but Isaac’s father keeps shouting – at Isaac, at Stiles – until he’s out of earshot.

“Court is dismissed,” the judge calls.

Isaac sinks back down, head between his legs, and shakes.

“I can’t get him to stop,” he hears Stiles say to Jennifer.

“He’s having a panic attack,” she says.

“No, I’ve _had_ panic attacks before. This is – he’s shutting down. This isn’t a panic attack.”

Jennifer leans over the bench and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“You were great, Isaac,” she says softly. She’s lying to him. “We won.”

She and Stiles have a whispered conversation a few feet away. When she leaves, Isaac gets up and walks out of the room. Stiles runs to catch up.

“Come on,” Stiles says. “Let’s go back to my place.”

“No.” Stiles stops for half a pace, then hurries to catch up.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“This isn’t – this isn’t going to work.”

“Is this because of what your dad said?” Stiles grabs him by the arm before they reach the doors and forces him to turn around. “He’s a piece of shit. Don’t listen to him.”

“I’m the piece of shit,” he says, shrugging out of Stiles’ grasp. “We’re not doing this anymore. I’m going home.” He starts back towards the doors.

“Isaac.”

“This isn’t up for discussion, Stiles.”

“You’re not the only one in this relationship,” he says. “You can’t just decide.”

“Yes I can.” Isaac wrenches open the door and turns around. His heart is pounding. All he wants to do is run back and bury himself in Stiles’ neck. He looks so sad and angry and hurt. Isaac put that look there less than twenty-four hours after John told him not to. But he feels ugly and unworthy and uncomfortable in his own skin. He’s so scared that he’s going to end up like his father, angry and hateful, and that he’s going to hurt Stiles again and again and again. So he says, “Don’t follow me,” and walks away.

xxx

He spends the next few hours sitting on the couch staring at his hands. He thinks about how Stiles had touched him last night and wishes he had stopped himself. Except he doesn’t, not at all. He wants to relive that night over and over because he knows it can’t happen again.

(Stiles doesn’t deserve someone as awful and ignorant as Isaac, and Isaac doesn’t deserve someone half as wonderful as Stiles.)

Isaac makes soup and eats it while he leans up against the wall next to the window. Part of him wants Stiles to call, because maybe then he’ll be able to apologize and go back to yesterday, when Stiles had kissed him like he was something special. Another part of him hopes that Stiles never comes around again because he realizes he can do better than Isaac.

He knows that if Stiles comes back, there’s nothing that can stop him from fixing things, not even the heaviness in his own chest that makes things progressively worse. That makes him twelve years old again, hiding underneath his bed and barely breathing so that maybe his dad won’t find him tonight.

(He always did.)

It’s almost midnight and Isaac is lying on the floor, his head and shoulders resting on the tile of the kitchen and the rest of his body out on the wood of his living room. There’s a knock on the door and he freezes completely, heart hammering.

He’s about to get up quickly and get one of the knives out of the drawer next to the stove when someone speaks.

“You don’t have to open the door,” Stiles says. “You don’t even have to talk to me, okay? Just listen. I know that you’re scared and angry and hating yourself right now, but I want you to know that I think you’re amazing and you might not think you’re good enough for me, but I kind of don’t think I’m good enough for _you_. You’re brave and selfless and I hate that I’m going to say this through a door, but it’s been two months and I am so in love with you that I don’t know what to do with myself.”

He pauses for a moment, as if he’s maybe waiting for Isaac to say something back.

“I think – no, I know I love you. I love you. Last night was incredible and I wish it was enough to make you understand how much I care about you. You won today. You were brave and stuck it out and he can go fuck himself if he really thinks that little of you, because he’s missing out on an amazing human being. I don’t just want to be your start, Isaac. I want to be your middle and your end and your everything in between.”

Isaac gets up off the floor as quietly as he can and pads towards the door. He sits down in front of it, cross-legged, and leans his forehead up against the wood.

“After court I was going to take you out to lunch and then I was going to take you home and kiss you until you smiled again. And then we were going to watch movies until it was late enough for me to take you out to dinner. And then I was going to steal some wine out of my dad’s liquor cabinet and kiss every inch of your skin. I would have taken more time than I did last night. I was going to worship you.”

There’s a pressing silence during which Isaac closes his eyes and tries to imagine Stiles touching him again.

“So I brought you a bag of stuff that I really hope makes you feel better.” He shuffles his feet and Isaac runs his fingers along the unsmooth surface of the door. He wants to open it, wants to bring Stiles inside and kiss him everywhere. He doesn’t. “There’s, uh. There’s the wine, which I actually went out and bought because I didn’t want to give you a half empty bottle of wine, because that would kind of be a sucky thing to give as a gift. There’s chicken soup, ‘cause my mom used to make it for me when I was feeling sick, and there’s brownies, which she made when I was feeling sad. There’s a mix tape that I made for you one night when I was really drunk – it was before Erica’s party and all I could think about was how much I wanted to kiss you on your pornographic mouth. So there’s – me being a teenager, you know. There are some of my DVDs and a disc that has some, um, R rated photos of me, and I know this is an incredibly inappropriate time to do this, but at least I don’t have to be looking at your face when you see them? Because you might be grossed out because there’s the whole bit where you’ve only seen me naked once, and I’m pale and skinny and my elbows are kind of weird, and – there’s a notebook in there too but I’m not going to tell you inside it because it’s a little bit embarrassing. It’s, um. It’s all of the reasons I like you and I love you and all of the reasons you should like and love yourself too? Which is probably cheesy and sappy and Matthew McCaughey, but maybe it balances out how weird it is to give you porn of me.”

There’s a rustling as Stiles sets the bag down and Isaac pushes his fingers against the crack beneath the door. Stiles can’t see his fingers.

“So I’m going to leave this out here. I hope you’re in there and listening and that I didn’t just, like, confess my love to an empty apartment and then leave a bag with expensive wine, DVDs, and naked pictures of myself on your doorstep for your neighbors to potentially steal. I, uh, now I’m nervous about leaving this here. So if you’re – if you’re listening, can you, like, give me a sign?”

Stiles laughs a little bit and Isaac taps his fingers quietly against the door.

“Okay. Hi. You, uh.” The sound of his breathing is suddenly much closer. Isaac can imagine him crouching down, forehead pressed against the door. Isaac wants to touch him. “This feels like Doomsday. Isaac Lahey, I—“

There’s silence for a few more beats. Isaac listens to Stiles breathe.

“I’m gonna leave you alone,” Stiles whispers. “Unless you want me to stay.” When Isaac doesn’t say anything, he stands up. His voice is suddenly farther away. “I’ll be around if you need someone. Don’t – don’t do anything stupid, okay, because you’re not stupid. I love you and you’re not stupid. You’re my start, too, okay? You’re helping me heal. I want to do the same for you.”

 _You are_ , Isaac thinks.

 “I’ll talk to you later,” Stiles says, and then he’s gone.

Isaac opens the door quietly and pulls the brown paper bag into the house. He leans back against the door while he roots through it. He sets aside the bottle of wine and picks up the two CDs. One of them is blank, but the other has _I’ll be your sunset_ scribbled across it in Stiles’ handwriting. He pulls out the stack of movies and shows Stiles has brought and finally finds the notebook, wrapped up in one of Stiles’ tee shirts.

Isaac drapes the shirt around his neck and inhales deeply. The smell of Stiles automatically calms him down. He thinks of the Jeep and sleep talking and poppy seed muffins in the morning.

He flips through the notebook, fingers tracing over Stiles’ messy handwriting. He doesn’t read the words. Not yet.

He falls asleep against the door surrounded by someone he’s pushed away.

xxx

He doesn’t call Stiles on Saturday morning or Saturday afternoon. He spends that time watching Keeping the Faith and 27 Dresses and the Godfather and all of the other DVDs Stiles has given him. He eats the chicken soup in his bed with Stiles’ pillow supporting his back.

He doesn’t look at the pictures of Stiles because the next time he sees Stiles naked, he wants it to be real. He wants to touch.

By Saturday morning, he wants to call him over and apologize. But half of him wants to punish himself while the other half wants to spend time by himself. Not talking to anyone. Not working. Not being afraid. Just… being.

He spends Sunday the same way. He eats and sleeps and watches all of the things Stiles wants him to watch, and when he runs out of that, he logs into Stiles’ Netflix account and watches reruns of Battlestar Galactica. His mom liked this show.

He thinks she would have liked Stiles.

On Sunday night, he comes out of his shell long enough to send Stiles a quick text message. Then he turns off his phone, puts it in the nightstand next to his knife and falls asleep.

“ _Thank you_.”

xxx

Stiles is already standing in the elevator when Isaac gets there. His face lights up instantly, but then it falls and shutters off, like maybe he doesn’t think he’s supposed to be so pleased. Isaac gives him a small smile and stands up against the wall.

When he doesn’t get off at the second floor, Stiles gives him an odd look but doesn’t say anything.

He steps off on the third floor, then waits a beat for Stiles. He follows him down the hall to a little office set apart from everyone else. Everything is beige – the desk, the chairs, the walls, the floors. Even the little trash bin in the corner.

For some reason, Isaac had always imagined a cavernous room with black and blue veins running all along the floors and up the walls. Pulsating, almost Tron-like. He doesn’t know why he’d always had this image in his mind – maybe he’d seen it in a movie once – but he’s sorely disappointed.

Stiles keeps looking at him weird.

The room is empty when they walk in. Isaac can immediately tell which of the four desks is Stiles' because it’s covered in action figures, stress balls, and half-empty bags of candy. The one thing that catches his attention, though, is the picture taped up under the cabinet so that it’s hanging down right above his computer monitor.

It’s of the two of them from the night at the drive-in, when Stiles had told Isaac about reading his file. Isaac remembers Stiles asking one of the girls walking past with popcorn if they wouldn’t mind taking the picture. They’re smiling on the hood of Stiles’ Jeep, Isaac’s arm wrapped around Stiles’ waist. The girls had giggled when Stiles had shifted closer to him, one hand coming up to rest on Isaac’s lower back.

That was a good night.

He realizes he’s staring at the desk and that Stiles is standing awkwardly to the side staring at him.

“Hi,” Stiles says tentatively. He looks good. He’s wearing a solid blue button-down over a Marauder’s Map tee shirt and he’s got a little bit of stubble over his lip and under his chin. He looks so good.

Isaac reaches out for him, then crosses his arms over his chest when Stiles takes a step forward.

“I’m sorry,” he says to the floor. Stiles is right there in his space, fingers dancing across his arm. “I’m sorry. I got scared. You – I don’t deserve you. You’re never going to make me believe that. But you said you love me, and I don’t think I can breathe right without you. I feel safe when – when you’re here, and I don’t feel so lonely or ugly or awful. You make me feel, uh. Like I’m worth something.”

“You _are_ worth something.”

“I don’t hate myself when you’re with me,” Isaac says. He thinks of Allison, who keeps pushing away the person who loves her most. He doesn’t want to end up like her. “I’ve never not been scared, but then you came along and you protected me. I like the way I feel when you’re around. I like myself when I’m with you.”

“I like you when you’re with me, too.” Stiles smiles at him and grips his forearm.

“I love you,” Isaac whispers. Stiles bites his lip and surges up to press his forehead against Isaac’s.

“No doors, no walls,” Stiles says back. “I love you. I love you.”

Isaac wraps his arms around Stiles and hangs on like he’s an anchor. He feels safer already. Less twelve, more going-on-twenty-one. He’s not drowning anymore.

 

 

_Epilogue_

“Heyyyy, sexy!”

Isaac breaks apart from Stiles at the sound of Erica’s voice and turns around to see Derek wading through the crowd. Isaac had seen him that morning, but somehow the dim lights and loud music in Erica’s living room made him look different. Less pathetic office manager, more leather jacketed badass.

He’s holding onto a brunette girl who looks way too shy to be dating Derek. Way too shy to be the same girl who’d taken down Isaac’s dad. If Isaac knows anything about Jennifer Blake, Derek is in for a treat.

“He’s got a girl!” Erica shouts.

“Hey, Grumpy Cat is out socializing.” Stiles leans against Isaac and smiles up at Derek, who glares at him. Isaac thinks of the discussion he and Stiles had had the night before – how much bribing would it take to convince Derek to wear a turtleneck – and bursts out laughing.

“I’m Jennifer,” she says to them. Isaac can see in her face that she knows exactly who he is.

“Isaac. This is Stiles.”

“You all work with Derek?”

“Work with, enslaved by – tomato, tomatoe.” Isaac elbows Stiles in the side. “No, I work in tech support. Isaac and Erica are part of Derek’s team.”

“’Work’ is a relative term,” Derek says. “Erica watches TV and Isaac flirts on the phone like a high schooler.”

“We don’t do that anymore,” Stiles says and Derek sighs at him.

“I’m going to get drinks,” Jennifer says, clasping her hands together, obviously wanting to get away from the tension that’s building between Derek’s fist and Stiles’ face. Isaac knows he’s going to get punched one day. “Isaac, you want to come help?”

“Sure.” He squeezes Stiles’ elbow as he passes and follows Jennifer into the kitchen. Once they’re out of sight, Jennifer makes an excited noise and gives him a hug.

“How are you?” she asks. He smiles at her. “I’m going to take that as a positive. I’ve never seen you smile like that before. Is it Stiles?”

“It’s always Stiles.” Isaac leans forward and gives her another one-armed hug. “What about you? How did you end up with Derek?”

Jennifer makes an embarrassed face and says, “You can’t make fun of me.”

“Oh, God.”

“He rear-ended me. He gave me his phone number for insurance reasons and I called him. Because he’s hot.”

“Out of all the hot guys in the city, you ended up with my _boss_.”

“At least I didn’t end up being rear-ended by your boyfriend.” She peeks around the doorway back towards where they came from. “He’s pretty hot, if I do say so myself. I’m glad you’re doing well.”

“I’m still seeing Ladonna once every week.”

“Have you gone to see your dad?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

There’s a beat of silence between them and Isaac breaks it by saying, “Thank you. For everything. I don’t think I ever said that.”

“It was my greatest pleasure.” She smiles at him.

“It’s not perfect, but I’m happy. I’ve never had that before.”

“Happy looks good on you.” She reaches out and squeezes his arm, just like she did when she was his lawyer.

“Hey. Maybe now that Derek’s getting some he’ll be less grumpy.”

Jennifer laughs loudly and shakes her head. “No. I don’t think anything could make him less grumpy. I can see why you guys call him Grumpy Cat.”

“We got him a tee shirt for Christmas.”

She widens her eyes a little bit. “I saw.”

“He kept it?”

“He wears it to bed.”

“Oh my _God_.”

Stiles appears suddenly at Isaac’s shoulder. He laughs nervously and ducks underneath Isaac’s arm.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he says, “but Derek was getting nervous about you leaving him all alone with me and Erica. And then I may have accidentally knocked someone into him, and that someone may or may not have spilled their drink all down the front of him. Keep in mind that this was accidental.”

Isaac spots Derek stalking through the crowd towards them. There’s a big red stain down the front of his shirt and a look of murder in his eyes.

“You may want to run,” Isaac tells Stiles, and Stiles takes off through the kitchen like a rat beneath people’s feet.

Derek reaches them and growls, “Which way did he go?”

Jennifer and Isaac point to the front door in perfect unison. Once Derek leaves again, she laughs and gives Isaac another hug.

“I’m glad I came tonight,” she says. “I wasn’t going to.”

“I’m glad you came too.” She leans into his side lightly and he smiles down at her, then up over the crowd at Stiles, who is crouching on the stairs, watching for Derek. He catches Isaac’s eye across the room and smiles wide at him, fingers pressing up against his heart. Isaac mimics the movement.

This is not the start, but it is also not the end. It’s the middle and everything in between.

He’s not wearing a sweater tonight.


End file.
